Born in 1955 in Colombes. Drawing teacher in the French national education system until 1996, he has since devoted himself entirely to art.
Born in 1955 in Colombes. Drawing teacher in the French national education system until 1996, he has since devoted himself entirely to art. Painter since the mid-1980s, known for his paintings populated by cats. Alain Séchas taught drawing in the French national education system until 1996. From 1981 onwards, his work as an artist precisely explores drawing as a projection from which the viewer cannot escape. « In Alain Séchas's latest paintings, we have fun, we party! Cats are immersed in an effervescent bath of urbanity, in a typically Parisian setting. […] For, for Séchas, the world of painting and the painting of the world are inseparable. But in the current situation of a pandemic lack of social life, this elitist society fresco takes on a strange, provocative and ironic turn. […] Frankly opting for a bad painting that contrasts with this society motif, Séchas daubs a theatre of figures. At times, chaos seizes the canvas, echoing the ambient uproar; a painting smeared with pink and green turns a garden party into a spring explosion. The artist throws a pot of paint in the face of his audience, after John Ruskin's formula. These Cocktails offer the spectacle of a joust between the artist and his audience. The expressive, unusual pictoriality will surprise Séchas fans; yet it simply affirms painting, its necessity and its vitality. In this regard, the most decisive gesture is the appearance of the signature for the first time within the painted work: he places his monogram AS, which stands out from the colourful agitation of the canvas, with jubilation and vigour. To the cruel deprivation of works and museums, Alain Séchas opposes the absolute necessity of art for its viewers themselves. » Text extract, Anne Bonnin, 2021