ÉRIK DESMAZIÈRES
Lives and works in Paris.
1948 : Born in Rabat (Morocco).
1971 : Graduated from the Institut d’études politiques de Paris.
1971-1973 : Took night classes from Ville de Paris in the studio of engraver Jean Delpech.
1978 : Received the grand prize from the Arts de la Ville de Paris in engraving.
2006 : Elected president of the Société des Peintres-Graveurs français.
2008 : Elected member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
Over one hundred solo exhibitions displayed in various institutions, museums, and galleries. His works are conserved in more than sixty public collections in France and overseas.
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After growing up between Morocco, France, and Portugal, he enrolled in Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. In 1971, the year he graduated, he decided to take on a career in the arts. Having practiced drawing since childhood, he enrolled in the Ville de Paris, studying drawing and engraving with Jean Delpech.
In 1972, he chose engraving as his specialty and primary medium, with support from engraver Philippe Mohlitz and New York gallerist Andrew Fitch, who is now undertaking the publication of his engraved work.
Recognition of the work of Érik Desmazières was quick, as he received the Grand Prix des Arts de la Ville de Paris in 1978. After forty years of work, his œuvre is composed of over two hundred plates. Many of his solo exhibitions have taken place in Europe, in the United States, and in Japan, including retrospectives at the Musée de la Maison de Rembrandt d’Amsterdam in 2004, at the Musée Carnavalet in 2006, "Paris à grands traits", at the Musée Jenish de Vevey in 2007 : "Les lieux imaginaires d’Erik Desmazières".
Featured in the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Rijksmuseum, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the New York Public Library, Erik Desmazières' works combine technical virtuosity and dreamlike visions in a unique way.
A master draftsman, meticulous engraver, creator of dizzying images, and iconographer for Borges, among others, Érik Desmazières is an atypical figure in contemporary art, both for his techniques—etching and aquatint—and for the themes and sources he favors.
The mysterious world of Érik Desmazières is filled with interior scenes, deserted by their inhabitants, naturalistic drawings detailing crabs and shells, akin to cabinets of curiosity, Leonardo de Vinci’s flying machines, and Parisian passages and architecture that affirms the many abundant architectural styles where the legacy of Hieronymus Bosch or Piranesi is evident.