Patrick Neu valuation
French artist of almost invisible works: Old Master paintings drawn in candle soot inside glass, and a tunic of bee wings.
Patrick Neu was born in 1963 and lives and works in Meisenthal, in the north of Lorraine.
What a work by Patrick Neu is worth
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Bio
Patrick Neu was born in 1963 and lives and works in Meisenthal, in the north of Lorraine. He trained at the École supérieure des arts décoratifs in Strasbourg, was a resident at the Villa Médicis in Rome in 1995 and at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto in 1999, and since 2003 has been creative director of the Saint-Louis crystal works. His work is slow, exact and made of the most fragile materials: a tunic made from thousands of bee wings, armour reproduced in crystal, a veil woven of natural hair. Since 1996 he has drawn with candle smoke, depositing soot on the inside of antique glass cabinets, panes and crystal wine glasses to reproduce works by Bosch, Holbein, Rubens and other Old Masters, images so faint that they appear only against the light. The contrast between the delicacy of the materials and the weight of what they depict is the point, a meditation on how fragile life is.
His works are extremely fragile: soot drawings cannot be touched or cleaned, bee wings and hair are vulnerable to handling, insects and humidity, and crystal and glass break. Any work should be examined, packed and moved by specialists, and its condition documented before and after. Thaddaeus Ropac represents him.
At a glance
- Born
- 1963, Bitche
Strasbourg, Rome and Meisenthal
MAMCO in Geneva gave him a solo exhibition in 2010, followed by the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2015 and the Abbaye de Maubuisson in 2018.
He has been included in group exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, the Centre Pompidou-Metz and the Musée de Cluny in Paris.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
