After a passage through youth illustration and comics, François Avril is recognized today as one of the major cartoonists of our time. Born in Paris in 1961, a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d'Art Olivier de Serres, he began his career by publishing his first drawings for the magazine press, advertising and publishing. François Avril claims the contribution and influence of comics in his work; his delicate and elegant universe is transposed in...

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  Biography of François Avril

  After a passage through youth illustration and comics, François Avril is recognized today as one of the major cartoonists of our time. Born in Paris in 1961, a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d'Art Olivier de Serres, he began his career by publishing his first drawings for the magazine press, advertising and publishing. François Avril claims the contribution and influence of comics in his work; his delicate and elegant universe is transposed in his drawing as well as in his painting.
  
  He is 23 years old when he begins to publish his first drawings and collaborates in parallel with the magazine press and publishing. His drawings regularly illustrate the columns of "Libération", "Lire" or "The New Yorker".
  The artist, who is heir to the clear line, has been sharpening his frail and elegant line for more than thirty years. The graphic aesthetics and the strength of his compositions have made him an artist with a remarkable identity. Drawing his inspiration from the observation of cities and landscapes, François Avril delivers through his works a poetic and renewed vision of reality, magical compositions, oscillating between realism and abstraction, always in a harmony of bewitching colours.
  François Avril draws and paints cities directly from his imagination, a mixture of childhood memories and images frozen in the memory of a tireless stroller; silent cities, hieratic buildings, landscapes composed like music paper. "My constructions are intended to be more artistic than realistic," he says. François Avril likes to reveal the beauty of urban constructions in reinvented compositions, where large refineries, factories, cranes, bridges, watchtowers or simple buildings are brought to the pantheon of aesthetics. More than a city, it is the idea of a city that François Avril likes to tell, through construction games, perspectives and vanishing lines that he likes to assemble. Adopting the point of view of the solitary walker, he recreates the decor of a fantasized city where time and noise seem to stop. A magic that he declines in different places like Paris, Tokyo, New York or Brussels. In the end, the destination doesn't matter to him, since the one he represents doesn't exist.
  Since 2006, the artist has taken over the landscape and in particular the seaside to create imaginary coastlines that evoke Brittany, Iceland, Scotland, Greece, Italy or the United States.
  François Avril explores different techniques, using in turn acrylic, inks, lead pencil or coloured pencils. He has also produced numerous prints (lithography, silkscreen and etching) in limited editions.
  He regularly exhibits his work on canvas or paper in Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam, Brussels, Dinard, Strasbourg and Tokyo.
  

  

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