Biography

 

“I do not paint a subject, but my relationship with a subject. At times, it seems to me that this relationship is more real than the observed object, or the subject which observes. ”

— Guillaume Rossignol

 

Guillaume Rossignol was born in Paris in 1971. He started to paint at the age of 17, when he was struck by the expressive power of a self-portrait by Van Gogh. He attended night school at the Ville du Paris, where he studied drawing with the painter Remi Aron. It was in this period that he began painting landscapes, inspired by the countryside around the French capital.

His work, which was at first heavily influenced by Impressionism, was later influenced by the works of Matisse, Picasso, and the avant-garde of the twentieth century. The frescoes of Masaccio, seen during a trip to Florence, were a revelation to him. He attended the Academy of Fine Art in Florence for two years, in order to study in depth the works of the early Italian Renaissance. In Tuscany he also learnt about the world of restoration, which helped him to better understand the possibilities, as well as the limits, of different painting techniques.

On his return to France, he did his military service as a conscientious objector in the Emmaus community, founded by Abbé Pierre. He spent a year in Budapest, where he studied artistic anatomy with Kiss Tibor at the Academy of Fine Arts. Afterwards, he attended the courses on morphology by Jean-François Debord at the School of Fine Arts, in Paris. In France, he began a series of paintings that he has worked on for more than twenty years.

In 2005, he moved to Sabina, Italy, where he now lives with his family. His works are in collections in Europe and the United States.