A play of colors
If you haven't heard of the painter Bruno Dufourmantelle yet, I'm sure that before long his name will be on everyone's lips, first as a whisper, as the discretion of "talent scouts" demands, then, month after month, the rumor will be confirmed until it becomes the explosion of a brass band! Indeed, in the wings of stardom, this young painter is gliding along, success by success; the greatest international collectors, even before he is known to the general public, are already buying up his works by the brushful! It's well known that, before being a game, this market is a stake, and prices are going to climb, climb and climb again, on the "phynance tree" where the leaves are banknotes vibrating in the wind of fashion. But that's not what this is about (!), it's about the play of colors that Bruno Dufourmantelle directs with particular mastery. Let's hear him speak:
"Colors? There are no colors, only vibrations; a color only exists in relation to the transparency of those that preceded it on the canvas, in relation to the neighboring tones that surround it. To find a yellow, a green or a red, I never start by smearing yellow, green or red; color is a search, a game to be mastered; my paintings, whether oils or pastels, contain no fewer than fifteen different chromatic layers".
Bruno Dufourmantelle is a poet, and I'd listen to him talk for hours on end, but I'd like to share a few of his words with you: "How I love painting! Even when I pass it along a wall without having seen it, and a little further on, as I walk, the feeling of a presence holds me back. So I turn around, retrace my steps, approach it, gliding along the ground between light and darkness, under the strange impression of losing my identity, sensing an omen, a new colorful encounter. But suddenly the wall is there, very close, too close. A pedestrian watching me is astonished, the light is pale... And I walk away without a word, afraid of having surprised, upset or disturbed the eternity of a work of art...".
He tells me: "The painter's gesture is simple, and that's what makes it beautiful, violent and true. To be always on the lookout for a new pretext and never to be confronted with the weakness of his gesture and the variety of his encounters. The wonderful thing about painting is that anything is possible. The only difficulty is to find order in the work, because this order cannot be transgressed. But beware! Hidden errors will one day rise to the surface of the painting to cry out to the eyes that will hear them. Nothing that is painted belongs to us; only the grace of living. And that's when I plunge into the canvases he presents to me; the Paris sky seems to join in, a symphony of clouds, air movements, the discernible presence of infinity! A curious paradox to which only art can lay claim.
After the powerful majesty of oils, we come to the more intimate pastels, as vibrant as skin, as mysterious as a shiver: "In my work, pastel and oil are complementary; the starting point for a painting is a sensation that only the pulverence of pastel can give me; it's only after studying a group of pastels that oil becomes a necessity".
When I ask him where his preferences lie, he replies: "Actually, I value both, but not in the same way. Oil would be the sea and pastel the lake, Victor Hugo and Lamartine, Beethoven and Mozart". Painting, music, literature, pictorial colors, the color of a sound, a colorful text... Color sometimes plays a role in creating masterpieces.
Dorian Paquin
L'Officiel de la couture et de la mode de Paris - 1984
