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Patrice Murciano

Painter.

Patrice Murciano was born in Belfort in 1969 and then moved to Montpellier when very young. Captivated by art at a very early age, he started out by copying strip cartoon figures at the age of 6 and then, aged 8, went on to paint his first muses (fashion magazine models at the time) using his mother’s makeup that he applied to the back of old rolls of wallpaper, abandoned in the attic. He exhibited his first painting when he was 12, at a group exhibition. Inspired by the romantic nudes of photographer, David Hamilton, he constantly painted these misty nudes until he embarked on photography himself at the age of 16. When he was eighteen, he took part in a group exhibition organised by "Arts et Lettres de France" and received the young hopeful’s medal. For a few years, he left painting aside and devoted himself solely to photography – portraits, nudes and fashion. Patrice was only interested in women. Women as “muses” that he represented in paintings in 1996 with a style that he termed “Courbisme” (curvism) in homage to women’s curves – highly colourful women - exaggerating the elements that he liked most (overstated mouth and expression, African curved back, etc.). He exhibited his new style for the first time in New York in 1998 at the Soho “Rez Namasi” gallery. 10 years later, he fell in love with the artistic style of American painter, Jackson Pollock, and his “dripping” technique (dripping paint onto the canvas without touching it. This he found highly erotic and it enabled him to apply a different approach to this permanent quest for feminine beauty: he then called his new style “POP GRUNGE”. (Main exhibitions: New York, Los Angeles, Osaka, Paris, Montpellier).