Max Legrand (born February 26, 1958) is a French artist. His fields are painting, installations, poetry and Neo-expressionism. He has been influenced by Aime Cesaire, Marc Chagall, Cy Twombly, A.R. Penck, Henri Matisse, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker. His career began in the late 1980s, when he started to produce Neo-expressionist paintings in Hamburg. His greatest inspiration for writing and painting originates from jazz music.
Legrand was born in Fort-de-France, the capital of France's Caribbean overseas department of Martinique. He was the second of four children of Marie Alice Angarny and Paul Emmanuel Legrand. His father, Paul Emmanuel, was born in Fort-de-France, Martinique, and his mother, Marie Alice, was born in Fonds-Saint-Denis. Legrand was a very apt student in drawing and painting. His teachers noticed his artistic abilities, and his mother encouraged his artistic talent and creativity.
After the death of his mother in 1963, Legrand, his sister, and his brothers were raised by their grandmother. The family resided in Schoelcher Plateau Fofo for seven years, then moved to Boulevard de la Marne in 1970. Legrand attended the Lycee Polyvalent Technique et Professionnel of Fort de France until he was twenty years old. He was later obliged to join the French army in the South of France between 1978 and 1979.
In 1979, Legrand began drawing and working on fashion shows in Paris. He collaborated with several young French artists and fashion designers. In 1986, Legrand was a member of the Amadeo Musical Dance Company in Paris. That same year, he worked with other groups and artists with whom he was later professionally involved. He also appeared in several live shows with the well known singer Jeane Manson. In June 1987, Legrand attended seminars at the Hochschule fur bildende Kunste Hamburg. In 1988, he was accepted at the Academy for advertising, graphics and print. He completed his training as a graphic designer assistant in Hamburg. In 1989, he made his first abstract portrait with mixed media.
2012: Exhibition: Gallery B,14 El Primer Club de Arte Contemporaneo de Barcelon
2012: Exhibition & charity auction during the 65th Annual Cannes Film Festival in France
2011: Exhibition Signaux des Temps at Galerie Vinosage Hamburg Germany
2011: Exhibition Time Signals at Die Weingaleristen Hamburg Germany
2011: Art showing in one of the most famous galleries in Germany.
2011: Appeared on France O, the French public television in a feature entitled "Portrait of Max Legrand: the successful emerging French Artist of the 21st century".
2010: Exhibition Corporate Art in Germany
2009: Exhibition Corporate Art in Germany
2008: Exhibition Aurum Hamburg Germany exhibition “Signes du Temps” at the Agora Conseil Regional Martinique
2007: Exhibition Hotel Interconti Hamburg Germany
2005: Exhibition Corporate Art in Germany
2004: Exhibition "Voyage without Baggage Part 2“
2004: Exhibition “Liebe” Kunstsalon – Elbe 76
2003: Hamburg: Anne Moerchen Gallery
2002: Exhibition in Hamburg Galleries and abroad
2001: Exhibition in Hamburg Galleries
2000: Exhibition Gallery in Elysee
1999: Hamburg:
Exhibition Lichthaus Altona "Voyage without Baggage Part 1"
Exhibition Kampnagel "Raumobjekte Blickfang" (“Eye-Catching Objects”)
Exhibition Glinde "Form Art"
1999: Martinique: Exhibition "Le voyage sans bagages Part 1” at The Villa Chanteclerc
1997: Installations Projects: Pilgrims’ Journey and Nature is sensual Creation, Planning, and drawings for those future projects.
1995: Abstract and surrealist translation of philosophical and autobiographical themes in oil
1994: Permanent exhibition in the "Art de vivre" Gallery Hamburg, Milchstrasse
1991: Drawing works on paper
1989: First works in mixed media (Abstract portraits)
1988: Trained as a graphic designer at Akademie Grone fur Werbung Grafik Druck (Academy for Advertising, Graphics and Print)
1985: Performing artist in the Company Amadeo musical dance theatre in Paris
1980-1985: living in Hamburg
1999 La guitare Rock
Continuing his activities as a fine art artist, Legrand often incorporated words into his paintings. Before his career as a painter began, he produced poetry and installations while becoming known for investigations into the complex spectrum of the human existence. This study was from love to death within a framework of political, societal and religious developments. It runs like a contextual thread throughout the entire work of Legrand.
An emotional closeness to the subjects longs for distance so that it can be represented artistically. A formal reduction allows access to the essential abstraction and the formulaic compression of an expressive visual language balancing the substantial visual themes presented. With his choice of subjects and artistic means, as well as decision in favor of abstraction and assemblage, Max Legrand’s art is emblematic of contemporary modern art.
Using expressive, paste-like application of colour, texts and symbols are inscribed in encrusted backgrounds. Solidified traces of movement from Legrand’s working process mark the image in relief-like manner. The process of artistic configuration remains fully conspicuous. Legrand’s materials are enamel, oil and acrylic paint. He mixes them directly on the image with materials such as mortar, straw or wire.
In 2008, Legrand featured large-panel paintings and individual canvases at the Exhibition Signs du Temps at the Agora Conseil Regional Martinique, the surface dense with writing, signs, collage and imagery. The years 2008-2010 were also the beginning of Legrand’s new Artistic period in general, even if they weren't very well received by the critics.
TIME SIGNALS AND COLOUR HARMONY - The Visual Worlds of the artist
The figures in the paintings all appear, as the title indicates, "without baggage". They inhabit the visual space in emblematic shortcoming, as symbols with psycho-graphical characteristics. Symbolic signatures reveal their internal and external reference points. Other figures appear as codes in the background, interspersed with text.
The visual figures are travellers without baggage. They already have everything they need for their voyage: their potential as individuals, en route through their lives, as a part of – or perhaps, in confrontation with – civilisation. This is an artistic program which is not limited to this exhibition, but which has been developed in many variations during the past years.
The investigation of the complex spectrum of the human existence, from love to death – within a framework of political, societal and religious developments – runs like a contextual thread throughout the entire work of Legrand.
An emotional closeness to the subjects longs for distance so that it can be represented artistically. A formal reduction allows access to the essential; abstraction and the formulaic compression of an expressive visual language balance the substantial visual themes presented.
Using expressive, paste-like application of colour, texts and symbols are inscribed in encrusted backgrounds. Solidified traces of movement from Legrand’s working process mark the image in relief-like manner – the process of artistic configuration remains fully conspicuous. Legrand’s media is enamel, oil and acrylic paint, mixed directly on the image with materials such as mortar, straw or wire.
His artistic signature gives an accent by the specific earthy tonality of the colours, the powerful values, as well as the forms which hark back to African masks and oceanic sculpture. Without being an explicit theme, the ethnographical influence of his native Martinique manifests itself here, transfigured through updated references into a highly personal visual language.
It is this penetration of various influences and personal experiences which is the essential characteristic of the work of Legrand. He believed that life and art are directly interconnected with biographical references such as music, dance, literature and graphics. One painting unites the inspiration offered through a piece of jazz with echoes of modern lyric poetry. The aphorisms and verbal sequences are analogous to musical harmony, and transformed onto the picture plane, discover their own signs and symbolic worlds.
In another painting titled “Maxmania”, a male figure is sketched in black wearing a crown. This is a king surrounded by the actors and emblematic signatures of his environment, yet he remains on his own.
It seems to be the same figure who, in a later work, raises his arms in fury: a dark figure only indicated by a few stokes, in front of the schematic outlines of the figures surrounding him. Le roi incognito no longer wears his crown, but is configured archaically, directly from the colour worlds. This unrecognized king travels in much the same fashion as the men and women in the series of paintings described above – without baggage. As a result, he also has no use for status symbols. He has ventured upon the journey of life, into the center of a complex, civilizing reality. Much the same as Max Legrand, whose works and artistic process are informed by the conflict between emotional perception and critical reflection.
