Childhood
Jean-Paul Perrenx was born on 20 June 1950 in Sétif (Algeria). In several texts, he has humorously recounted his childhood, marked by seminal memories, such as a trip to a circus where he saw real lions: "[...] there are always people who ask me why I paint lions. And I tell them that I don't know why I paint lions, since I've never seen any, except at the Piste aux Etoiles when I was a child in Algeria, and also a little in La Vie des Animaux, always on TV, and once in Algiers, because I had slipped under the tarpaulin of a circus to get in without paying, since I was doing the four hundred tricks when I was a child, around six and eleven years old, and in this circus there was a tamer with lions.
He explains his future vocation as a painter as follows: "[...] if I am a painter it is because of the sea which was blue and which I always looked at in Algeria from the kitchen window [...]".
One day, his mother gave him a box of crayons: "I just remember that my mother bought me a box of crayons [...] so that I could stay quiet instead of going out into the streets.
He recounts the memory of a first "pictorial experience" that changes his view of the world:
"[...] my drawings were posted on the walls of the school. Once I had drawn a house in perspective for the first time in my life, and instinctively I had understood well how to do the sides, the vanishing lines and so on and I had enjoyed drawing and really I saw the school benches in a different way that day."
His childhood was marked by the Algerian war. The situation having become too dangerous, his parents decided in 1962 to come to France and settle in Dijon. There he discovered the cold, the snow and the customs of Burgundy. He drew and painted his first canvases. His dream is to enter the Beaux-Arts.
Fine arts
He spent five years at the Beaux-Arts in Beaune and then in Dijon and obtained the Diplôme National des Beaux-Arts in 1971.
During this period, he produced hundreds of drawings with various themes. Many faces, but also scenes, sometimes fantastic or associated with the world of artists or the sea. He also created clay sculptures. His talent was noticed by his teachers. He participated in his first exhibitions, at the Maison des jeunes de Talant and then at the Galerie Vauban in Dijon, where he presented drawings of birds (including an "Albatross") and people's heads (including an "Eskimo") as well as a clay sculpture entitled "Tétard".
At the School of Fine Arts in Dijon, he met the woman who would become his wife and with whom he would have two daughters.
1980-2000
In the 1980s, he took part in competitions and won several prizes, including the prestigious Prix des sept collines de Rome (in 1980). He had numerous exhibitions: at the Greuze Museum in Tounus (which welcomed a contemporary artist for the first time), but also in Paris, Dijon, Tournus, Cannes, Cologne... and, of course, in Mâcon, his favourite town, where he lived until the end of his life. In addition to his daily artistic activity, he taught plastic arts in various schools.
From 1988 onwards, he began a long series organised around an obsessive theme: "suspended" couples, characters floating, sleeping, sometimes roped up, in an undefined space-time. In the 90s and 91s, he also painted a whole series of "fusional" couples ("Personnages assemblés"). This was followed by the series of "Femmes-girafes" (1996-1997), "Tête à tête" (1997), "Personnages-fenêtres" (1998) and "Les Dormeurs dans l'herbe" (1998-2004).
Afterwards...
He continued a series of "Faces" until 2006. In 2005, he produced a whole series of drawings mixing humour and intertextuality, including the "Adopting Couples". In 2010, he starts the series "Ambiance/ La Fête".
At the end of his life, knowing that he was suffering from an illness since 2012, he produced numerous series: "Les Moineaux", "Les Plages", "Les Femmes vers Lunel"... All of them testify to his tireless desire to paint, his creative talent and his "childlike" humour, which he has never lost. He painted until his death in Mâcon on 20 February 2015.
His painting is unclassifiable. Some critics call it 'expressionism', others 'dreamlike figurative'. The work is so vast that there is much to discuss. We can note his predilection for certain themes, present in the first works of the 60s and 70s (the world of artists, beaches, couples, faces...), which are found, in later works, deepened and renewed.
