Jean Arcelin

Arcelin studied at Charpentier, an accredited art history school affiliated with the Sorbonne, where he developed an interest in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century painting. His paintings blend false realism and figurative art, and aspects of Baroque style. His pictorial compositions are simply the results of his imagination without any cinematographic aids, using principally the oil canvas technique called "alla prima", keen to the original impressionist painters, which cancels the initial undercoated and glazed steps. Landscapes edge with the urban sea, and combine with portraitist gesture. He takes corners of Paris, cafe chairs piled up in the angle of view of a monument, or the dressing room of a theatre, and portrays them empty of all human presence. He participated in the Ebel sponsored Art and Culture in Basel and in Villa Schwob, Switzerland from 1990 to 1995 and exhibited in 1989, 1990 and 1999 at the Institut de France. ==Recent exhibitions==