ERIC MASSHOLDER

(Born in 1960 in Heidelberg, Germany)

The German-Italian artist Eric Massholder lives and works in the south of France. As an autodidact, his artistic vision and work was significantly influenced by his numerous study visits to Morocco (1979), Greece, Sicily and India (1980) as well as his studies at the Villa Arson in Nice (1981-82).

In his works, Eric Massholder condenses his desires, fears and dreams in far-intense motive collections. For this, he repeatedly uses the same grammar and expression – for example, life and death can be found in the form of eggs or skulls in his paintings. He is deeply inspired by great artists like Dalí, van Gogh or Picasso.

He creates an unknown, strange and fascinating universe that he constantly renews with the use of multiple colours and technics (oil, pastel, ink). Themes and patterns are recurring and he adds symbolic and allegorical signs (triangle, sun, moon, fish, peacock, pyramid, sphinx).

“The fact that I do not understand myself the meaning of my paintings, when I realize them, does not mean that they do not have any …”, says Eric Massholder, wanting to put in evidence the subconscious role in the construction of his paintings.

His paintings are colourful, the techniques, forms, materials he uses are multiple and as many pretexts to open the door to his dreams and to stage his visions, his fears, even denounce the vices and anxieties of a society that has lost its hideouts.

It is often the scene of a series of metamorphoses, jams or deformations in which all the orders of creation, human, animal, vegetable and mineral, merge into each other revealing the complexity of the world, real or virtual, and of life, whether lived or fantasized.