Farah Atassi

Farah Atassi is a French painter whose work explores the intimate relationships between the figure and its surrounding space. In her paintings, the figures are never reduced to mere representations: they inhabit environments that extend their interiority. Motifs, forms, and compositions all contribute to a shared pictorial language, in which space acts as the mirror of an interior world. Her practice unfolds in a constant spirit of experimentation. Shaped by a plural identity—born to Syrian parents and raised in Belgium—Farah Atassi has developed a body of work infused with multiple cultural and emotional layers. At once figurative and conceptual, her oeuvre stands out for its rejection of narrative in favor of a meditation on the very means of painting. It is marked by a fertile tension between embodiment and movement, where gesture and material heighten the sensory experience. Throughout her career, Atassi has exhibited in prestigious solo and group exhibitions, receiving international recognition. Notable shows include ‘Genius Loci’ at the Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain (2025), ‘Farah Atassi’ at the Musée national Picasso-Paris, France (2022), and the duo exhibition ‘La société des spectacles’ at the Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris, France (2024). Her work has been shown in other major institutions such as the Consortium Museum, Dijon, France and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, France. Atassi has been the subject of four monographs and her work is represented in major public and private collections worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; the Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon, France; the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France; the Deji Art Museum, Nanjing, China; the Davis Museum, Wellesley, MA, US; and the Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA, US. "First of all, it is important to say that Farah Atassi unabashedly embraces her profound knowledge of and admiration for modernist painting, from Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger to Georges Braque. As Atassi says 'the references and allusions in my paintings are not hints for the educated observer: they are formal propositions that need to be understood in their claim of universality'. Her subjects have now been distilled into the genres and classic stereotypes of the history of painting: these are mostly still lifes and feminine models - never men - who pose seated on rocking chairs, inside a studio or, as the artist indicates, 'on set', that is to say inside an action that is certainly minimal yet scripted. The titles of her paintings give an indication of her methodical exploration of these stereotypes: Woman in Profile , Seated Nude , Model In Studio , Still Life With Palette and Roses . Thus articulated, her painting leaves a little room for wordiness, favoring a form of permanence over the literal expression of the Zeitgeist and his vicissitudes. Confronted with its own history, the question of the subject quickly vanished in favor of the exploration of the possibilities offered by a history of forms that obviously is necessary unfinished." — Eric Troncy, art critic, curator, and co-director of Consortium Museum in Dijon