GERARD GAROUSTE
One of the most popular French artists of his generation, Gérard Garouste is a stand-out figure on the international art scene. Born in 1946, he lives and works in Normandy and Paris.
Gérard Garouste studied in Gustave Singier’s studio at the Paris School of Fine Arts from 1965 to 1972. In 1977 he put on a show at the Paris night-club Le Palace called Le Classique et l’Indien, of which he was the author, director and stage designer. He continued to work at Le Palace as a scenographer and painter until 1982. The first exhibition of his figurative, mythological and allegorical paintings at the Durand-Dessert gallery in 1980 marked the start of national then international recognition.
Represented by the leading American art dealer Leo Castelli in the 1980s, Gérard Garouste has displayed his work all over the world, notably in the United States, Japan, Germany, Latin America and Italy, and his art features in leading public collections such as the National Museum of Modern Art – Centre Georges Pompidou and the City of Paris Modern Art Museum in France and the Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation in Vienna.
In 1991 he founded La Source Garouste, a non-profit organisation that seeks to support struggling children and young people through artistic creation, in which he has been actively involved ever since.
Gérard Garouste’s work has been the subject of many exhibitions, including retrospectives at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (1989), the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (1989), the Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation in Vienna (1992), the Villa Medicis in Rome (2009), the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence (2015), the Fine Arts Museum in Mons (2016) and the National Museum of Modern Art – Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (2022).
Gérard Garouste has received many public commissions, including from the Elysée Palace, Évry Cathedral, Namur Royal Theatre, Mons City Hall, Notre-Dame de Talant and for the stage curtain of the Châtelet Theatre in Paris.
In 2009, in an autobiographical memoir co-written with Judith Perrignon, L’Intranquille, which became a huge critical and public success, he revealed his conflicts with his anti-Semitic father and talked openly about his struggle with mental illness.
Gérard Garouste has illustrated many art books and collector’s items, including Don Quichotte (Éditions Diane de Selliers), La Haggada aux quatre visages (Éditions In Press, translation by Rivon Krygier), La Méguila d’Esther (Hermann Éditeurs), Tal, la rosée by Daniel Sibony, Dieu prend-il soin des bœufs ? by Patrick Modiano, Le débat du coeur et du corps by François Villon, and Walpurgisnachtstraum.
In 2017, Gérard Garouste was elected to the Paris Academy of Fine Arts, succeeding Georges Mathieu. In 2019, he was raised to the rank of Commander of the National Order of Merit.
Gérard Garouste takes a keen interest in the roots of western culture, the legacy of the old masters and the myths that are the springboard for his work on “dismantling images and words” and his fascination with questions of origins, time and transmission. His paintings are born of associations of ideas; now unsettling, now joyful, they teem with sometimes fantastical animals and human figures with distorted bodies. His sources range from the Old Testament to popular culture and literary greats such as Cervantes and Rabelais.
Gérard Garouste has been represented by the Templon Gallery (Paris, Brussels, New York) since 2000.
