vieillesse éternelle

Stephane Salvi is an artist who paints in a slightly abstracted, naive style, working in broad, deliberate strokes of bright colour, and building up figures in painted line art. The artist’s works are loose and exuberant, capturing a feeling more than distinct detail.

le sculpteur

I enjoy the works in which Salvi combines painting with collage techniques. These works remind me a bit of pieces by fellow contemporary artist Aleksander Hardashnikov. Some recent works have incorporated fragments of photographs or printed imagery into Salvi’s painted planes. It’s interesting that these additions, despite their figurative nature, seem to only further obscure the representational elements present in Salvi’s works, creating pieces that are decisively abstract.

The colour palette that Salvi favours is subdued, which I find helps to ground the paintings in a sense of seriousness, or at least intent. The artist tends toward heavy, brown Earth tones, using saturated colour rather sparingly.

la loge II