Valérie Favre: My World Is Genderless

Artist Valérie Favre paints in cycles, eschewing the notion of standalone works. After working in Paris as an actor and filmmaker, she moved from the Seine to the Spree in 1998. Ever since the late Eighties, her paintings have drawn considerable acclaim and featured in numerous international exhibitions across museums and art galleries. Most recently, she was awarded the prestigious Prix Meret Oppenheim, one of the foremost international art awards. As part of this year’s Gallery Weekend in Berlin, she will open an exhibition of works spanning past decades at the SLEEK Art Space opening on 29 April 2025. Today, Valérie Favre lives and works between Berlin-Wedding and Neuchâtel in francophone Switzerland.

SEBASTIAN C. STRENGER: You’ve just published your memoirs, MALEREI. Ein Gespräch (‘Painting. A Conversation’) What can readers expect?

VALÉRIE FAVRE: Art Basel visitors already had a preview during my book presentation with Hans Ulrich Obrist. The event was fully booked – as was my book launch at Berlin University of the Arts, where I taught painting as a professor for the past 20 years. As in the book, Axel Ruoff and I spoke about the significance of painting. It’s a kaleidoscope of art-historical perspectives, offering insight into the everyday lives of painters. Above all, it explores my personal challenges.

SCS: What are those challenges?

VF: My path led me from theatre, where I was a set designer and actor, to film, where I was a director, amongst other roles – before arriving at painting. Through painting, I seek to explore human existence in all its facets, often delving into imagination, fantasy, nightmares, memories, and, inevitably, the darker depths of the human condition. In the end, my work is always a dialogue – both political and artistic – interwoven with my biography, where philosophy, psychology, and literature play a fundamental role.

SCS: You work in cycles. What does that mean?

VF I investigate the nature of painting, using every method at my disposal – I sometimes even try unusual things like working in the bathtub, allowing chance to take the wheel. I use my body, time, playfulness, and much more. This approach has resulted in cycles spanning more than 40 years. Among them are my Weiße Gemälde (‘White Paintings’), which I’ve been creating since the Nineties, as well as my Suicide cycle, in which I depicted various methods of suicide. There’s also Le Bateau Des Poètes (‘The Boat of Poets’), inspired by literary figures such as Robert Walser and Paul Celan, and my series of self-portraits based on the iconic 1916 photograph of Hugo Ball performing ‘Verse ohne Worte’ (‘Verses Without Words’) at the Cabaret Voltaire. My androgyny plays a significant role in all of this.

SCS: What are you currently working on?

VF I’m exploring the Brothers Grimm as an entry point into the dreamlike world of Surrealism – examining the mental landscapes within their fairy tales. As I trace their ideas, I find myself transported into the pictorial realms of Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington. I feel a deep kinship with Carrington – through her life story, her darkly mystical aesthetic, and especially her book The Milk of Dreams, in which she continuously reinvents the world and existence through a ‘prism of imagination’. 

SCS: What is the greatest challenge in your paintings?

VF: Above all, creating a sense of space – something I first explored in my drawings with ink or watercolour on paper. It’s always a balancing act, ensuring my works don’t veer into anecdote. As a woman and a painter, I’m not searching for prettiness – that’s never been my aesthetic goal.

SCS: Why not? 

VF It’s too ‘feminine’ for me. My world is genderless. I see myself as bodiless. The mind is what matters. Ultimately, though, there’s always a harmony to my paintings, even when my subjects – like the Suicide cycle – are uncomfortable. In Le Bateau Des Poètes, for example, those on board are not only refugees but also the poets and writers who have influenced me – some of whom took their own lives. My thematic worlds are always interwoven; they even include recurring motifs, such as trees.    

SCS: Why do you explore subversive ideas?

VF James Ensor and Francisco de Goya had a profound impact on me. I dedicated an entire cycle to Goya’s The Witches’ Flight. I am drawn to thought provoking images – there must always be a touch of the mystical. At the same time, my paintings take time. Only when they move towards the path I had envisioned do I start to feel satisfied. 

SCS: What’s next for you?

VF My Homage to Félix Vallotton is currently on view at the Musée Jenisch Vevey until the summer. The Swiss Fondazione Epper in Ascona is exhibiting my drawings until the end of November, and my work is also featured in a show on feminist art at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. My main gallery, BASTIAN, is including me in The Magnificent Seven, and my Swiss gallerist, Peter Kilchmann, will present my latest paintings from November onwards.