Thierry Lefort in the shadow of Los Angeles palms

In collaboration with Yoyo Maeght, Galerie Louis Gendre is presenting, for the first time in Chamalières, works on canvas and paper by Thierry Lefort.
Born in 1967, the artist was only 12 when he picked up pencils, brushes, and pastels to create his first drawings and paintings, despite having no specific training. At 20, he moved to Henan province in China and spent three years studying at the Shaolin temple. During this period, he learned the art of calligraphy, then, upon returning to France, trained in painting with Philippe Lejeune, founder of the École d'Étampes. Today, Thierry Lefort, an internationally recognized painter, crowned with an impressive number of awards, conveys in his works from Paris or Los Angeles, "a prosaic urban reality with the same rigor as Cézanne treating Mont Sainte-Victoire or Monet his Giverny ponds."

The following interview was conducted in late December 2024, as Thierry Lefort was preparing to leave for Los Angeles to install  California Blue , his first Californian exhibition presented at the Show Gallery, West Hollywood. Speaking of the light on the West Coast, he did not imagine he would witness the tragedy of devastating wildfires. Despite the situation, he confirmed his return to France and his presence at Galerie Louis Gendre for the opening of the exhibition  De Los Angeles on January 18 and 19.

Olivier Perrot: You worked for a long time in France, particularly in the Paris region, and then you decided to move to Los Angeles. Why?
Thierry Lefort: Actually, I wanted a change of scenery, a different light. I knew the sun there was very special, and for the past 7 years, I've been working 6 months in Los Angeles and 6 months in Paris. But even when I'm in Paris, I also work on the Los Angeles theme. I also wanted to see different architecture, a bit like when you're a child and your parents take you to Brittany. Suddenly, you see slate roofs and you think, "I've never seen that, it's new"... in Paris, there are only zinc or red tile roofs... and when you arrive in Los Angeles, you see new things, you're a bit like a child discovering new things.

O.P: Shadows are very present in your compositions; you give them a lot of space.
T.L: There were already so many painters who focused on light that I told myself I should let them work on light. Since that space was already taken, I focused on shadows. In, let's say, traditional painting, shadows are always very fluid, there isn't much material. There's mostly impasto and material on the light, so I told myself I'd do the opposite, I'd apply impasto to the shadows and try to work with shades of blue that would give a particular resonance to the light. By working more on shadows, I realized that it actually gave even more light, as if I had only focused on the light.

O.P: Is this blue, which is very present in your paintings, now your trademark?
T.L: First, I focused on shadows, which are always something cold, gray. So I tried, in my own way, to bring in shadows relative to other colors, and it ended up being this kind of blue that's never the same, because I always mix them, a bit by instinct. So blue became essential for shadows, it suited me well. It ranges from an almost black blue sometimes, to a slightly bluer blue.

"Little by little, I eliminated and eliminated to find my color again."

O. P: You trained with Philippe Lejeune of the École d'Étampes. Didn't he contradict you on the issue of color?
Thierry Lefort: Since I'm a bit disciplined, it comes from my stay in China, when I'm with a master or when I'm learning with someone I like or respect, I listen to what they say, and that's ultimately normal. So, Philippe Lejeune really had this background as a professional painter, having been in Maurice Denis's workshop, the pope of the Nabi movement, when he was young. So he taught me a lot, but it was a somewhat academic learning process, where color was somewhat excluded because when you teach someone, you don't have to teach them to use this or that color. When you teach someone French, if you want them to write poems, you teach them to write French correctly, you correct their spelling mistakes, but what they have to say cannot be dictated. And Lejeune couldn't tell me, "use this and that color." So, I continued working with him on spelling mistakes, and when I left him, little by little, I found my own way. When you search for your personality, you start letting go of things you've learned to find your own means of expression. Little by little, I eliminated and eliminated to find my color again, but with the craft I had learned.

O.P : And you ended up rediscovering the color that was so important to you?
T.L : I had a painter grandfather, I also had two of my mother's brothers who were painters, and let's say when I started painting, what attracted me, I was small, around 13 or 14, was precisely color. I remember it very, very well because I had colorful paintings at home and that attracted me. From a very young age, I was attracted to color.

O.P: You like to quote André Lhote who said that the hardest part is taking away, not adding...
T. L: Yes, yes, because he considered that as you progress, you should rather lighten and eliminate to move forward. He explained very well that when you are a young painter, it's like being a motorboat in a harbor, and with the very dark, very blue water of the Mediterranean, the engine makes a lot of splashes, creating white everywhere... and he said that when you are a young painter, you want to splash, so you put a lot everywhere, you add details, things... and when the boat starts to leave the harbor, the faster it goes, the narrower the wake becomes and the fewer splashes it makes. Yet it goes faster, further. Indeed, the more you progress, the more you should try to eliminate things. This is really related to what I learned in China. For example, in martial arts, when you want to progress, you must eliminate everything parasitic to keep the essential. So that resonated well with me.

O.P. Is this what materializes with your blue, monochrome works?
T. L: Yes, somewhat, with this economy of means and this very simple way of approaching things, trying to say as much as possible with as little as possible.

Entering the intimacy of forms and colors

O. P: If we want to describe Thierry Lefort's painting, what vocabulary should we use?
T.L: In this period, it's true that I'm focused on landscape, but I've done a lot of nudes and a lot of portraits, because I worked for 10 years with Philippe Lejeune. He taught mainly portraiture, and I only did portraits all the time. So who is Thierry Lefort today? Someone who seeks to progress, to go further, to delve into the intimacy of shapes and colors. More and more, I'm looking for new harmonies, new notes. It's like a piano: when you press a single key, it makes a "ding," but if you start making three notes, one after the other, it creates a chord. That's what I'm looking for in painting today: to create chords with my colors, increasingly complex chords, because when you simplify, you complicate elsewhere. If you simplify something, you have to complicate something else, otherwise, you just simplify, simplify, but it makes no sense because you're only removing. In painting, if you want to simplify, you also have to complicate. For example, if you simplify details, you might have to complicate the color. But if you simplify the color, you might have to complexify the drawing, and so on. All of this creates big headaches, and the simpler it seems, the more complicated it actually is.

O.P: Nevertheless, in your paintings of Los Angeles, you simplify with the absence of characters but you leave immutable things like electrical wires.
T.L: I wanted to do without characters in the landscapes because either I paint a character who takes up the whole page and determines the general form by taking possession of the composition on the canvas, and everything revolves around him, or I do without characters in a landscape because I don't want people to say that there is life thanks to the characters, that's too easy for me. I don't criticize paintings with characters, some do it very well, but I consider it more interesting to complexify in terms of forms and colors and to have a vibration without characters.

O.P: Are you a studio painter or an on-site painter?
T.L: Before, I tended to paint a lot on location, to be inspired by the landscape, to capture things spontaneously, and I realized it was a bit like impressionism. Again, I'm not criticizing, but after a while, when you paint on location, you tell yourself you're going to capture a moment, around 3 in the afternoon. A good impressionist will paint their picture in three or four hours... but after a while, I considered that it had its limits. To go further, what do you do next? Well, that's studio work. I always take my sketches on location, but afterwards, as I go deeper into color harmonies and I put more thought into the composition, it requires longer studio work; it's a must.

O.P: Does that mean there's also a memory work, or ultimately, the present moment isn't that important?
T.L: In fact, what I note in my sketches are the contrasts—what's dark, medium, light—and I simplify that. Then I tell myself the palms are dark and the sky is rather light, or vice versa... what really interests me are the values, and the weather at the moment doesn't interest me too much because I'm no longer in impressionism. I'm in a painting that will take its place in the composition, in the forms and colors, and that transcends a precise moment.

O.P: What will be after Los Angeles? Have you already defined it?
T.L: No, nothing is defined because when people ask me which of my paintings I prefer, I always answer that it's the one I will make tomorrow. In fact, I am always focused on tomorrow, wondering how to work on this or that because I am never satisfied with what I have done... never. So where will it go? I don't ask myself too many questions, I don't worry because I've always let myself be guided by my instinct and I tell myself that when it has to change, something within me will change.

Exhibition Thierry Lefort – de Los Angeles  from January 18 to February 22, 2025, Galerie Louis Gendre, 7 rue Charles Fournier in Chamalières, Wednesday to Friday from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 

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