Bernard Pras

Bernard Pras was born in 1952 in Roumazières, in the Charente region. He was raised partly by his grandmother, who ran a grocery store and who introduced him to the art world; he completed a brief apprenticeship in mechanical engineering, which he quickly abandoned to enroll in the Fine Arts School in Paris. Poitiers and then of Toulouse. Graduated in 1974 from Beaux-Arts of Toulouse, Bernard Pras became an assistant master in various colleges before resigning from the National Education. His artistic activity then turned towards engraving at the Claude Manesse.

At the end of 1980s, After several years of hesitation and research on form, he begins to find his own artistic path by developing the principle of the’aquagravure, Then, in 1994, by creating installations and assemblages of heterogeneous objects in the style of’Arcimboldo, whose overall composition only really takes shape for the viewer through the medium of photography, which recreates the plane image intended by the artist. The first important exhibition takes place in 1998. This principle of’anamorphosis has been the artist’s leitmotif, who has been experimenting with larger and more elaborate installations in the form of various Inventaires that reinterpret various images known from the history of art (Crucifixion, van Gogh, Francis Bacon…), and of contemporary society (portraits of’Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Che Guevara, Mickey, Jacques Dutronc…).