Francine Van Hove - Video

Francine Van Hove (born May 5, 1942) is a contemporary French painter.

Francine Van Hove was born in Saint-Mandé (Seine, France) in 1942.
From 1959 to 1962, she received an intense training in drawing and artistic anatomy while preparing her secondary school teaching certificate in drawing and plastic arts.

Appointed professor at the Strasbourg high school, she remained in her position less than two years, time enough to understand that the job did not suit her. She therefore resigned and returned to Paris where, in total isolation and gropingly, she developed the pictorial technique and themes that characterize her art.

She exhibits regularly since 1971.

Francine Van Hove’s work (black stone and pastel drawings and oil paintings) is displayed in numerous private collections all over the world. As can be noted on the internet and on the social networks, it has cult status among connoisseurs.

Francine Van Hove draws and paints young women. Her models collaborate with the artist to find the best poses that they must hold for hours. Preparatory drawing sessions enable the painter to capture the casual gesture as well as its graphic and sculptural qualities. Her figurative nude drawings and paintings are realistic, natural and sweet insights into everyday scenes.

Under an apparent simplicity, her everyday life scenes keep a kind of mystery. In a safe place, unconscious or unconcerned by their own beauty, young girls let themselves enjoy laziness or everyday pleasures: reading, having tea, daydreaming or sleeping. Sometimes pensive, other times melancholic, they forbid us the access to their inner life and stay in a way elusive. Francine Van Hove's work reflects a feeling of impossibility of communication and a saving loneliness, as a retreat deliberately chosen to be protected from the noise of the world.

Influenced by Greek sculpture, Flemish painting and the Italian Renaissance, Francine Van Hove seeks to perpetuate the classical tradition of painting: her refined work brings a sensation of wonder through the play of light, the rendering of the textures and the richness of details. Her skillfully modelled bodies impose a dreamy harmony through the perfection of their confident gestures.

"I draw and paint directly from life, nature and reality, as regards the characters and settings, and I do not conceive another approach, no matter the constraints it brings.

I work five to six hours a day everyday at the least, as long as there is enough daylight. One painting requires two to three months for its completion.

I always start off by drawing attitudes. The motion and gestures of the body are of prime importance. A lot of my paintings rest solely on the aesthetic interest of an everyday gesture which is timeless. Generally, the gestures which I choose to paint have been decided upon beforehand, and even jotted down in an 'ideas notebook' when they first occured to me. I then ask several of my models in succession to strike up these attitudes, these gestures, to improvise on the theme: the model’s talent is really decisive.
Some motions are meaningless to some of the girls, so I have to compose with it and create something slighlty different.

Once the attitude is set down in a drawing, I am extremely faithful to it even if I have to change the scale or to integrate the figure within a group or an interior that I had previously drawn.

My themes are limited in number and they are not at all intellectual. Essentially, it is about small, simple moments of happiness slightly nostalgic when time stands still. One should not expect that I express any anguish at the cruelty of the present world: I paint against the angst as a matter of fact, and to help live in harmony." says Francine Van Hove.