“Well, one day I’d like to touch a painting. Just touch it. ”Eugène Leroy, 1979 The postwar period in France led to a resurgence of abstraction with the Second School of Paris. Nevertheless, another path—that of figurative art centered on the human figure and fueled by existentialist questions—emerged in parallel. While Eugène Leroy’s work can largely be placed in this latter category, his artistic approach remains highly personal and unique. The artist kept his distance from the artistic debates of the time regarding abstraction and figuration, preferring a path marked by encounters with the old masters as well as a focus on his contemporaries.
In Leroy’s work, a unique fusion of figuration and abstraction takes place: thick layers of paint structure the entire canvas, giving it a distinct solidity and a labor-intensive, textured appearance. The themes addressed by the painter are often classical—the nude, the landscape, the portrait—and serve as a pretext for painting. Every one of Leroy’s canvases is distinguished first and foremost by his technique: he picks up several colors with his brush, without mixing them beforehand, and applies them directly to the canvas. Successive layers end up overlapping and blending in unexpected ways; the patches of color merge with the volume, breaking free from the two-dimensionality of the surface. The subject is lost in this magma of impasto; it becomes the painting itself. More intense and pure accents of color emerge on the surface, above the dark hues in the depths—a direct result of the technique employed.