The Genesis of Elsa Genèse

Elsa Genèse, who was born in Paris in 1944, lives and works in her Loir et Cher countryside studio. After learning Japanese and Korean, she graduated from the National Oriental School in Paris and spent the 1965-1966 school year in Tokyo as a student of Waseda University and teacher at the Alliance Française. She then chose to study Fine Arts at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and was taught the basics of concrete work by sculptor Michel Charpentier at the National Fine Arts School in Paris between 1974 and 1977.

40 years later, she is still working this unusual material with her bare hands. Concrete allowed her to express in lyrical movements the nature of life combined with the sensuality of the earth and the movement of the spirit. She welds the steel structure herself to provide tension to the sculpture while concrete gives it the strength of stone. A paradoxical research between flesh and spirit!

Elsa Genèse made some outstanding monumental sculptures for the Mondoubleau Middle School, the Montesquieu High School in Evry, and the Boursay Church Historical Monuments, where her famous and imposing Mater Magna has been supported by the UNESCO since 1992.

Between 1978 and 2017, she exhibited her work extensively: at the Paris International Art Exhibition, Grands et Jeunes d’Aujourd’hui at the Grand Palais, at Mac 2000 in Paris, at FRAC Champagne, in Parisian galeries such as Galerie HM in boulevard St Germain and Galerie Nicole Bellier in Bastille as well as in Orléans Blois etc. She also exhibited abroad, at the Dallas Art Fair, in Anvers, Italy, and three times in Tivoli (Roma) most notably at Villa ADRIANA (UNESCO)

The originality of her works makes her one of the most inventive sculptors of her generation.

Small pieces are melt in bronze (fonte d’Art original with artist signature), while those made of concrete are too fragile to be sold.