Francoise Deberdt
France, 1934
Person TypeIndividual
BiographyFrancoise Deberdt has been drawing since the early age of seven. She began her formal training at age fourteen at l'Ecole des Arts Appliques de Paris followed by L'Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts. In 1957, she had her first exposition in Paris. In 1960 she and her husband, an architect, moved to Rome spending four years at the Villa Medicis where her work continued to evolve. Over many years Deberdt works have exhibited worldwide in Europe - France, England, Germany, Finland, Holland, Norway, Switzerland, Bruxelles, Belgique; Australia; Japan; and USA. She has been been the recipient of numerous awards and a books have been published on her works.SheT graduated from the School of Applied Arts in Paris, then studied stained glass and engraving. In 1955 she was admitted to the painting section of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.In 1960, she moved to La Borne (Cher) to learn sandstone pottery, then moved to Rome, Villa Medici, where she accompanied her husband, an architect. Returning to Paris in 1664, she lives and works there since.“In the stories that Francoise DEBERDT tells us, or rather that she tells herself, she gives us the sensation of being able, with a simple stroke of a heel, brush or chisel, to take flight to the magical universe that she describes to us. Her technique is very elaborate. One can take a magnifying glass to admire how accurate and detailed her work is, how much attention to minute details dominates her job. Yet her work keeps the freshness, the innocence, the poetic vision, the lost paradise of a child’s mind that would have kept intact its memory and accumulated over the years, and without aging, the intellectual and aesthetic talent of a big person. Françoise DEBERDT, magician of the unknown, cannot explain her paintings and like most creators, she goes to places she does not know. But she has to go there, and that's good for us.” --Laure Blanchet