Jacques Benoit

French painter.

The architecture of the Modern Movement, Cinema and Pop/Rock/Jazz and Jazz-Fusion music constitute the thematic cornerstones that structure Jacques Benoit's pictorial work.

His paintings (mostly large formats), monotype engravings and works on paper are grouped by series, fed by one or several of these themes.

Regarding architecture, the French artist's work explores Oscar Niemeyer’s legacy with several series devoted to the city of Brasilia, to which Niemeyer and the urbanist Lúcio Costa gave birth in 1960. Benoit dedicated also a series of his “Niemeyer” paintings to the three buildings built by the Brazilian architect in the Paris Region in the 70s/80s.

Another important part of Benoit's works themed by architecture is devoted to French architect Henri Vicariot’s Paris Orly Airport, renamed “Orly Sud” after a new West Terminal opened in the early Seventies.

Architect Minoru Yamasaki’s New York Twin Towers also inspired the painter a body of three paintings in 2002, dealing with the reconstruction of the destroyed World Trade Center.

In the field of music, Joni Mitchell's compositions have been not only inspirational, but fundamental in Benoit’s work from the mid Seventies to the end of the Eighties. The painter also developed series based on the music of Elton John, David Bowie, Véronique Sanson, Rickie Lee Jones (“Versants Ouest“) and Patti Smith (“horsesvisions“). Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Miles Davis, Shirley Horn and Jean-Louis Murat have also inspired the painter some works. Concerning cinema, the movies of Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Philippe de Broca and Norman Jewison have had a major influence on Benoit's pictorial work.