A graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in the late 1970s, Patrice Giorda soon began exhibiting in French and foreign galleries and institutions. Since the 1980s, his works have been part of the most important national collections in France, including the Centre Pompidou.
In his painting, powerful and contrasted, where the golden light builds the space of the canvas, the symbolic representation of nature or man goes beyond simple landscapes, scenes, portraits or still lifes: reality is enriched by the memory and permanence of a quest that Giorda qualifies as “digging of the being”. He attunes the untunable: the dazzling beauty of light and color, and the depth of the shadows of solitude.
Giorda seems almost to take up this dialogue with painting of the past: “The image,” he writes, “is always of the order of the drawing: you have to take the risk of losing its structures and representation to penetrate the world of painting, in order to find your subject, but this time from within. Light is born when color ceases to exist and becomes space.” Beyond the painted flight of steps or the small stone arch nestling in the violet shadow, the memory of a child lurks. Only the painter knows the twists and turns. And the secrets.”
Laurent Boudier, “Retour au pensionnat”, 1996
