I. Anne and Patrick Poirier

After studying at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and travelling extensively in the East, Middle East and United States, Anne and Patrick Poirier spent four years at the Villa Medici in Rome. Right from the start of their residence, they decided to work together and, abandoning their respective egos, pooled their ideas and affinities and their joint creations became the fruit of these shared efforts. No longer solitary artists, working in their studio in search of a personal style, they were now travellers, surveyors of sites, discoverers of different cultures, religions and civilisations. Turning their backs on the conventional roles of “sculptor” and “painter”, they focused instead on those of “archaeologist” and “architect” – interchangeable depending on the circumstances. Their approach no longer involved formal research but, through an artistic take on human sciences, a journey into memory, which they hold to be a fundamental value, the basis of all intelligence between beings and societies. As children born during the war (Anne in 1941 in Marseille and Patrick in Nantes in 1942), they bemoan the fragility of civilisations and cultures, and their style is often associated with fragmentation, ruin, disaster. As multidisciplinary artists, no means of expression is out of bounds.

Since the death of their only son Alain-Guillaume, in 2002, they have been living and working in Lourmarin, Provence.