Andre Pijet » Andre

Andre Pijet Art Gallery is open

Andre — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:12:31 +0000

I would like to invite everyone to visit my newly opened Art Gallery.

You are welcome to have a walk through some of my chosen artwork.

The gallery will be regularly up-dated and the content might change accordingly.

Have a great digital stroll!

Bienvenue a ma galerie d’art.

Je vous invite de la visiter et découvrir mes dessins et mes tableaux.

Le contenu de la galerie sera régulièrement actualisé.

Je vous souhaite une belle promenade virtuelle !

To visit the Art Gallery click here.

La Serenissima

Andre — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:10:40 +0000

La Serenissima, The Most Serene Republic of Venice. It was once a significant military naval power of the Adriatic and the Northeast part of the Mediterranean Sea. The architectural beauty of Venice is as fascinating today as it has been through all her extraordinary past. Its socio-political and cultural history might serve to many politicians as an example of coherent thinking. The social system of the Venetian society in the past could be an example to many socio-political structures of our Contemporary world. The city from its early establishment had to fight for surviving in the barbarian world by which it was surrounded. Its republican structure lasted through the centuries until it was interrupted by the Napoleon in the 1789.

The Contemporary Venice is hosting the most important Biennial of Contemporary Art in the World today. The beauty of this city is irresistible to anyone, especially to all creative souls.

In the series of paintings La Serenissima, inspired by my first visit in Venice, I want to visualize the traces of the historic time imprisoned in the surface of the city facades. I want to express the poetic ambiance of thy city-fragmented surfaces adding to its exterior the fragmentary images of my subconscious memories. I am looking to express the sublime allegory of Venetian heritage and try to combine the Venetian historic past with its Contemporary realities. It is for me the search for the temps perdu, which I want to visualize in Contemporary way in my recent artwork.

To see the selection of La Serenissima paintings click here.

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Original artwork is available for sell in my Art Gallery

La Serenissima, Impression.

CA$35.00

Original
Signed Print Copy
Original Artwork (+CA$1 164.00)

La Serenissima collection

Andre — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:37 +0000

The series of paintings inspired by the trip to Venice.

Impression, La Serenissima series.

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Acrylic paint on navy cotton

Life Studies

Andre — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:43:24 +0000

These are drawings done during my travels. For life sketches I love to use the sanguine charcoal and watercolors. It gives a delicate touch to the drawing and a chromatic harmony to the whole composition. The practice of life sketching should be an essential intellectual gymnastic for all kind of artists. There is nothing more stimulating than drawing model, architecture, landscape, or still life in direct. When I draw, I exclude myself from the reality and I concentrate only on the subject of my interest. Only when I am fully concentrated on my model I see the most important lines and colors to follow. My creative mind leads me through the forms of a model and transfer my artistic sensibility on the fields of the white paper. Drawing life, it is always a poetic journey and some kind of creative adventure to try to see just what is essential for the intrinsic unity of artistic aesthetics of the final artwork.

To see the selection of drawings please click here.

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Drawings in direct

Andre — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 04:47:56 +0000

Collection of sketches from life models.

Kamilka

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Model studies with sanguin chalk and aquarelle

France, Limoges
October 2009

Portraits

Andre — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:55:57 +0000

Portraiture, is to me the most fascinating form of artistic activity. During my travels I always carry with me a cornet where I constantly sketch different faces trying to register the moment of time through the facial imagery. I always feel as I am stilling from the portrayed individuals their moment of a passing time. When after I look at them back I have the ultimate power to rewind their existence in my life. Furthermore, I am rewinding the happy moments I had the chance to live. To portray the human face is one of the most demanding and most difficult to paint. Drawing or painting a portrait demands a total concentration of our mind, only then we will be able to understand the surface of the face in order to paint it well. To paint a good portrait demands to study the person, study his face, get him to know. It is the best to have a model posing for you as for anything we paint, Painting from pictures kills our creative psychological sensibility. To paint from the flatness of the photographic image is cheating our creative perception.

To see more images click here.

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Formula 1

Andre — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:48:29 +0000

Formula 1, a racing competition between the industrial giants of great marks of sport cars, which bits all records of popularity among all classes of our contemporary society. It is interesting to see the glamor created around it. The most powerful cars in the world are driven by drivers surrounded by beautiful women and lot of noise from super powered motors. It is a great show to many. I am not great fun of such events, but I did few artworks referring to this subject. Some of these drawings and paintings were published.

To see more pictures click here.

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Satyrical Artwork

Andre — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:11:19 +0000

I began to draw satirical drawings from 1983. It all started by accident. I made a few funny commentaries on our life in socialist realities in Eastern Block to my friend during one of our conversations. He was then already recognized cartoonist in Polish press media, He invited me to draw something funny for two festivals of satirical art. One was taking place in Montreal, Canada, and another in Casino Beringen, Belgium. I thought about it and it appeared to me like a new artistic adventure. I did two drawings responding to the festivals themes. One was about a censorship in press media and another was a free gag. He sent my drawings together with his in the same envelope, in order to economize on the mailing cost. The results were quiet encouraging. The drawing about the press won a prize in Belgium and in Montreal my artwork was accepted to the festival final exposition. Both drawings were published in festivals’ catalogs. These two facts encouraged me to pursue my artistic carrier in the field of satirical art. I begun to participate in different national and international festivals of satirical art and started to collect various prizes. One of the most important was the third prize in the International Biennial of Graphic Art in Sofia, Bulgaria. It was the first time, when I received financial remuneration for my artwork. It was approximately four hundreds American dollars, what represented at that time a small fortune in our socialist realities of Eastern Block. At that moment I started already publish my drawings in various publications getting at the same time more and more confident about my satirical abilities. It is in part the facility to see the ridicule and draw visual commentaries about it. It helped me to make my living when I was staying in Greece waiting to immigrate to Canada. I am definitely a painter, but the various forms of satirical art, like caricature and cartooning are with me since the beginning of my carrier. Drawing cartoons and caricatures is a passion to me, which I do exercise regularly since 1983. I always wanted to be a writer and journalist, and what I am doing in my satirical artwork is commenting on our contemporary realities. It is for me a kind of visual journalism. It is my way to perceive the ridicule sides of our world today. It is unfortunate that in the artistic circles the cartoon art is considered as lower kind of art, because of its commercial aspect. At the end what kind of artistic activities in our Contemporary World are not commercial? All forms of artistic production, even the over intellectualized, are created to be sold. It is why I do not agree with these megalomaniac statements. The satirical art is also created emotionally and involves certain knowledge in order to express various issues in researched and intelligent way. It is an important creative activity, which make people laugh and think. It is a pity that most painters ignore its importance and reduce it to a simple commercial activity. The satirical art is a product of intelligence and interior intellectual poetic sensibility, as any other form of artistic expression, but enriched with a wit and spicy seasoning.

To see the selected artwork click here

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Caricatures

Andre — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:03:23 +0000

Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) is generally considered by various scholars as a creator of the caricature due to his drawings and paintings depicting various characters in somehow caricaturist way. Before Carracci, Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) also sketched of his contemporaries the particularities of their facial characteristics . Giuseppe Archimboldo (1527-1593) also had his own way to compose from various objects a caricaturist portraits of the Habsbourg court personalities. However, it was Carracci who actually developed the art of caricature in his artistic productivity. The caricature as we know today was introduced by Honore Daumier (1808-1879), a French print maker, painter, sculptor, and caricaturist. His drawings represent a mastery of deformation not only the human physiognomy, but also an elaborated intelligent critical regard on sociopolitical realities of his times. To some extend caricature as a form of art accompanied people already in the early beginning of our Western culture. The Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans were scrubbing on the city walls images of heir rulers not always in quiet favorable way. Facial deformations drawn for fun were very popular long before some of its creators made of their activities recognized and admired profession. Personally, I like to draw a life portraits and caricatures. The direct contact with the model it is the best way for me to work. Working from the pictures is not as much fun as it is to look at the drawn person in direct. For me as an artist to draw caricatures is a great pleasure and I do it as often as I can. It is yet another form of art I am practicing and I am enjoying every moment of it. I work also from pictures, especially when drawing editorial caricatures, then I do not have a choice, but if I could I would prefer the model to be life in front of me.

To see the selection of caricatures click here.

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The First Nations

Andre — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 01:16:55 +0000

The artwork “The Premonition in the Badlands” represents the compact summary of the imperialist attitude towards The Native Nations. Symbolically it depicts the general attitude of the Colonizer towards the Colonized and its evident consequences. I have appropriated one of Edward S. Curtis’s photographs in order to depict the essence of the conflict of interest existing between the Colonizer and the Colonized. My artwork represents the incompatibility of interests and values held by the Colonized and the Colonizer. However, the artwork was created with the use of two different mediums that combined together, also show the possibility of peaceful cohabitation of the Native Nations and the “White Man.” It suggests also the existence of hope for common understanding and mutual respect between Native and Western cultures within our Contemporary realities.

In my recent paintings I am approaching the issue of Western interference in cultural values of the First Nations by confronting the figurative interpretation of Edward Sherrif Curtis’s pictures of the West with the chromatic abstract compositions reflecting allegorically the Contemporary World. Both realities confronting each other symbolically on the same surface of the canvas. It creates a kind of unity and underline the necessity of coexistence of both cultural values.

To view the selected artworks about the First Nations Contemporary issues click here.

To view the selected sketches from the Kahnawake POW WOW click here.

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