Nicolas Neyman

Nicolas Neyman was born in 1970. His mother was Paul Colin’s pupil ("La Revue Nègre", with Josephine Baker, "Le Tumulte Noir"...), and it is perhaps this that gave him a taste for line and drawing from an early age. At 16, he discovered Baudelaire and Lautréamont. Then Nerval, Proust and Surrealism. He then wanted to become a poet. A television report on Philippe Soupault strolling around the Gustave-Moreau Museum in Paris opens the doors to a new world.

The

painting "L’Apparition" and its watercolour version remain for him, thirty years later, like revelations

:

after studying literature, Nicolas becomes a journalist: curiosity, rigour, a weekly closing... But you don’t leave the art world like that. Degas became his lighthouse, his pastel drawings especially. Under the color, the woman, alive and sublimated. Then Schiele and his incredible trait. The darkness. Violence.

The

uneasiness that lets itself be loved little

by little...

After eight years of living modeling classes, another universe opens up. Working more and more from photos (browsed on the web or taken by himself), he likes to play with contrasts. The black pastel (Sennelier) became his refuge. The white of the paper is a small light guiding the spectator’s eye. In his sights, the woman. "The dearest was naked and, knowing my heart / She had kept only her sound jewels," writes Baudelaire. Nicolas dresses him in pastel with his black shadows. Welcome to his poetry.

www.instagram.com/nicolasneyman