VICTOR URSI            -  France 

Biography and artistic path

I was born on 23 January 1968 in Strasbourg to parents from Puglia (Ruvo di Puglia and Bari), and I followed a school path essentially focused on graphic art and painting.

After my studies at the University of Strasbourg, I taught visual arts at middle school for 13 years.

Since 2008 I have become a professional artist and painter.

At the start of my career I was mainly interested in abstraction, perhaps due to a solid training. At the same time, I set out to create expressionist landscapes.

For twenty years my sources of inspiration ranged from Romanticism to 1950s abstract painting.

My abstraction was initially minimalist: I worked mainly starting from straight lines, somewhat in the continuity of a Malevich, or the American “Color Field” painters.

In these works, I highlighted light as a life resource (watery light), with the idea of a search for original purity. I worked in chiaroscuro without any object or subject being brought out: light and shadow were the only actors.

During this long abstract period, my taste for the figurative never ceased, and the influence of abstraction made itself felt in the creation of my landscapes, especially in their evanescent, ethereal aspects. Visual reality became a kind of abstraction, a bit like Rothko’s early canvases.

Meanwhile, the practice of drawing and painting landscapes was also allowing an evolution of my abstract language.

First with the gradual introduction of colour and the strengthening of perspective; later, with the appearance of forms, reality could be evoked. Since these forms were sufficiently imprecise, they can suggest different approaches depending on the viewer.

It was not just a formal game, but rather a spiritual search for a memory “before life”.

Even though I reconcile this perfectly with creating abstract works, I always have a deep desire to improve and to deepen my figurative painting.

For five years now, I have begun making copies of works exhibited in museums or from documents.

This has allowed me to learn new techniques, refine my painterly language, and improve the finishing of my work.

A new painting has emerged from this, religious in character, finding its reasons in 15th-century works and in the art of icons.

In this regard, I am captivated by medieval and early Renaissance paintings that mix biblical scenes with idealised views of nature (Memling, Lochner, Schongauer, Botticelli, Piero di Cosimo, etc.).

Since then, the need for abstraction has no longer been felt, since it draws inspiration from figurative elements: unity is regained.

Today, my way of working has made great progress: I spend more time on the design and execution of my paintings and leave little room for improvisation.

I am considering creating entirely figurative polyptychs, as was done in the Middle Ages.

Victor Ursi