Madeleine

Calafell

A graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2020, an instructor at the Claude Dumas Ceramic Workshop since October 2017, and a winner of the Joseph Epstein Sculpture Prize in 2021, Madeleine Calafell is teaching at the New Academy of Amateurs (NABA). 

Madeleine Calafell's world comes from the allegories she has encountered in African landscapes and social imagination where nature is often deified. From her experiences in Africa (Ivory Coast and Morocco), the artist creates drawings and sculptures inspired by sketched memories, Alpha Blondy, Die Antwoord, Kader Attia, William Kentridge, Roger Ballen, the sad and joyful fantasy of brass bands, post-slavery codes, decolonization, the ZEF movement and apartheid.

Through reflection and imagination, Madeleine Calafell invites us to learn the necessary theoretical basics and the different technical processes to make a ceramic piece. 

Photo credit: Zoé Moineaud

Cynthia

Walsh

A graduate of the École d'Architecture Paris-Est (EAVT) in 2011, and of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Versailles (ENSA-V) in 2016, Cynthia Walsh teaches at the New Academy of Amateurs of Beaux-Arts de Paris starting January 2021.

Cynthia Walsh is interested in the changing Parisian suburbs and depicts landscapes that reveal a history soon to be buried at the dawn of a new narrative. These "Urban Frailties" evoke a society in profound transition and in search of new paradigms. She regularly exhibits her drawings in group and solo exhibitions.

She places the observation of reality at the heart of her teaching, and favours immersion in the places she draws. At the same time, she teaches drawing as a part-time teacher in various Parisian schools including the École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles (ENSP), the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris La Villette (ENSPLV) and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (ENSP). 

Maxime

Verdier

A graduated from Beaux-Arts de Paris with the congratulations of the jury in 2017, Maxime Verdier teaches the course "Landscape beyond the set" within the framework of the New Academy of Amateurs.

The world of Maxime Verdier is that of a dreamlike universe, half fairy-tale, half nightmare. From childhood memories and anecdotes of his daily life, he creates forms, sculptures, drawings and environments that tell stories. His drawings come upstream of his research or as a poetic punctuation of his large installations.

In his teaching, Maxime Verdier invites his students to seek, explore, experiment with the theme of landscape, trying not to represent an overview offered by nature in what it is in the first place, but in what it contains deep inside.

Photo credit: Adrien Thibault

Solène

Rigou

Graduated from Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2020, Solène Rigou teaches in the New Academy of Amateurs.
The winner of the Prix du Dessin Contemporain of Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2019 and shortlisted for the Prix de Dessin Pierre-David Weill in 2020, Solène Rigou practices drawing with various techniques and media: colored pencil on wood or projection screen, ink or graphite on paper, around the theme of memory and remembrance. She uses objects, places, hands to evoke visual or emotional experiences. As she reminisces, she develops a kind of pictorial autobiographical diary, retracing her memories.

In parallel to her pictorial practice, she is training in classical dance at the Paris Conservatory, a field she tends to explore through performance.

Gaspard

Laurent

A graduate of Beaux-Arts de Paris with the congratulations of the jury in 2020 and winner of the Hatvany Prize in 2019, Gaspard Laurent teaches the course " Telling with pictures: storyboard " within the framework of the New Amateur Academy.

His artistic work revolves around drawn fictional works. The notion of comics interests him in that it is a composite language, requiring the interpenetration of the fields of text, image and sequence. This has led him to experiment with the narrative rhythm of a comic book box per page and to reflect on the physicality of the book as a sequential engine - whether it is the fold of the binding between two pages, or transposed to the exhibition space, the corner of a wall. His drawings find their finality in self-publishing or in the co-design of video games. They are an intermediary that allows him to move from one medium to another.

Photo credit: Adrien Thibault

Maryline

Genest

Drawing with a live model, Capturing the fugitive

Maryline Genest, a French painter and graduate of the Beaux-Arts in Paris, explores in her drawings and paintings the notion of the home as a space in perpetual movement, a surge of unpredictable novelties. Her approach is part of a nomadic process, in which she moves around, listens, crosses, looks and adapts, reflecting the fluidity and movement of perceptions and lives.

Her works, imbued with the movements of the body, their gestures-inks, their fabrics-sensations, animal and plant species, play with colours and materials: paper, vegetable inks, illuminations, gouaches, oil paint on wooden logs. She develops strategies, real or fake, that invite us into dreamlike, unsettling tales.

Drawing inspiration from animal mimicry and societal dynamics, Maryline Genest highlights transmission as a vital link to others, a vehicle for personal transformation, enriching the human and creative experience.

Michel

Gouéry

A resident of the Villa Medici in Rome in 1986, Michel Gouéry has been a living model drawing teacher at the public Beaux-Arts de Paris classes since 1994.

A lecturer at the Centre Pompidou from 1988 to 2009, he has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in France and abroad. His teaching method focuses particularly on observation, plumbing, triangulation and comparison of contiguous forms. By approaching elements of perspective he teaches his students to draw in space the model and the objects that accompany it. He encourages his students to use different techniques (pencils, pens, brushes, charcoals) while leaving them a great deal of freedom.

Photo credit: Adrien Thibault

Antoine

Bénard

Painting with a live model

Born in 1963, Antoine Bénard graduated from Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1989.

He lectured at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume from 1991 to 1993 and at J. Dubuffet's "Tour aux Figures" from 1992 to 1998. He published a Manuel de l'anthropoïdo-centrisme in 1998 as well as a collection of prints, Les neuf vies du grand hibou in 2012. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in France.

A professor of painting with a live model at Beaux-Arts de Paris, his teaching revolves around the difference between representation and figuration. Instead of thinking of the model as a subject of representation, the aim is to consider the model as an object of the gaze. For Antoine Bénard, to see is to receive the visible, rather than to judge it in a will of control, it is then necessary to act on paper only to testify of a seizure of the form in front of oneself, allowing the construction of a singular figure.

Photo credit: Adrien Thibault

Cécile

Granier de Cassagnac

Painting with a live model

The practice of Cécile Granier de Cassagnac revolves essentially around watercolor. The inspiration of her work is based on the living (animals, plants, minerals) to better detach itself from it. She develops her plastic language through numerous trips and residencies: residency workshop in partnership with Culture France at the Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, winner of the Yishu 8 prize and residence in Beijing, or residence in Lomé, Togo.

She has been teaching painting at the Beaux-Arts de Paris public courses since 2009. Beyond the teaching of technical basics, she strives to transmit a sensitive perception of the subject allowing her to develop a dreamlike and singular plastic vocabulary.

Graduated from Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2007, she has exhibited her work in France, Belgium, the United States and China.

Laurent

Okroglic

Drawing with a live model

Artist for whom drawing has been at the heart of his approach since his studies, Laurent Okroglic develops a project that combines research, design and formalization. The versatility of his favorite medium, drawing, allows him to approach different registers of forms and thus inscribe the artistic practice at different levels: video animation, large format work, graphic painting, comic book and artist's book.

Graduated from Beaux-Arts de Paris with the congratulations of the jury in 2000, member of the Casa Velàzquez from 2000 to 2002, he has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions in galleries in Paris, Berlin and Belgrade. Professor of drawing of Beaux-Arts de Paris since 2006, he develops a quality pedagogical relationship with the public: dialectic, exchange, reflection and experimentation. Beyond the transmission of the plastic tools, it is a philosophy of the glance which is invited in the exchange. The expertise as well as his individual approach offer to his speech the performativity in the realization of the student.

Photo credit : Adrien Thibault