ART SUNDAY - MARCEL PAJOT

“A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.” - William Strunk, Jr.

A painting by the French artist Marcel Nino Pajot, today. He was born February 24, 1945 at Vergt, Dordogne. “The subjects of my paintings”, the artist writes, “are rarely premeditated, they emerge at random from my brushes, according to my pleasure or despair ... What counts is the preliminary drawing, of course, and painting as a material, the with colours, lines, scratches, the random mix of inks, gouache, acrylics... Pleasure is also the variety of media, canvas, and especially the paper which materially imposes its most sensual contraints.”

The artist has completed several series of works, two of the most characteristic being Venetian carnival scenes and the story of Don Quixote. His canvases are full of colour, rich detail, humour and often a popular, almost caricature-like immediacy. Even though he is undeniably a painter, Pajot is also primarily a draughtsman as he designs his subjects with a spirit imbued with a keen eye and disconcerting truthfulness. By adding a dose of lyricism, a touch of madness, a festive ambience, a touch of mystery and brilliant colour to his compositions, he is able to give an air of comedy or tragedy to the rich repertoire of moods he depicts on his canvases.

I have chosen a rather sparse and Spartan work of his, more restrained than his usual flamboyant style. It is an archetypal image for me of Cervantes’ immortal heroic duo: Don Quixote de la Mancha and Sancho Panza. The highly dramatic sky and the richly detailed foreground more than make up for the lack of rich colour and the two figures are so immediately recognisable and characteristic, that one gets one’s bearings even with a single glance. It is a frugal work, but one that is very poignant and eloquent in its simplicity.

The artist’s website can be found here, however it is in French.