INÈS LONGEVIAL

Early Years

Born in Agen, southwest France, in 1990, Longevial was introduced to art by her mother and the family library, where she discovered the work of Picasso, Matisse, and Modigliani. Later influences include Niki de Saint Phalle, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Georgia O’Keeffe, and filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. She began drawing and painting early, producing her first works at age 8 and continuing to study applied arts in Toulouse, where she completed a higher diploma in 2013. At 23, Longevial moved to Paris where she lives and works today. Her exposure to both Basque and Spanish cultures has deeply informed her artistic development.

Inès Longevial Artworks

Longevial’s contemporary art practice centres on painting and drawing, translating sensations, memories, and emotions into portraits and body fragments, often using herself as subject. She is particularly recognised for her exploration of skin, light, and colour—using smooth, vibrant swathes of pinks, blues, and mauves to create bodies that appear almost as landscapes or terrains. These works evoke both softness and strength, reflecting contemporary womanhood with a poetic sensibility.

Self-Portraits and the Female Figure

Longevial is best known for emotionally charged self-portraits and close-up faces, developed from memory and filtered through her own experience of myopia, focusing on intimate details of skin, texture, and form. Her sitters, almost always women, gaze outward with magnetic detachment or introspection, their features layered with subtle allegorical elements or references to dream and myth. Series such as Magic Hour (2020) and Skin of a Storm (2025) showcase her interest in how light and time of day affect perception and feeling.

Colour, Landscape, and Abstraction

Longevial’s use of colour, inspired by fauvism and Spanish visual culture, is central to her practice. Her paintings frequently combine figuration and abstraction, rendering bodies as fields of overlapping hues and ambiguous contours, dissolving boundaries between figure and environment. Using the motif of the body as a home, she creates diaristic paintings imbued with memory and atmosphere.

Duality, Diptychs, and Symbolism

Themes of duality, the double, and diptychs appear throughout Longevial’s work, most notably in her 2023 exhibition Pourfendue at Almine Rech, echoing Italo Calvino’s Le Vicomte pourfendu. In these works, tight framing, mirrored palettes, and the interplay of halves reflect a fascination with psychological and bodily division, empathy, and contrast.

Select Commissions and Collaborations

• Bottle designs for Evian and Badoit (limited edition, 2018)
• Visual collaborations with brands including Nike, Levi’s, Fred Perry, Wad, and Amélie Pichard.

Exhibitions

Inès Longevial exhibitions are detailed below.

Solo Exhibitions

• Skin of a Storm, Almine Rech, New York (2025)
• Les Silences du Désir, Almine Rech, Shanghai (2024)
• Pourfendue, Almine Rech, London (2023)
• L’Heure magique, Les Jacobins, Toulouse (2022)
• Sous Le Soleil, HVW8 Gallery, Los Angeles (2017)
• Je Pleure Comme Je Ris, Galerie M, Toulouse (2018)
• Je Suis Une Couleur, Chandran Gallery, San Francisco (2018)
• Self-produced solo, Tournelles Gallery, Paris (2019)

Website and Instagram

Inès Longevial’s Instagram account was how she caught the attention of the art world, leading to representation by Almine Rech.

Inès Longevial FAQs

Ocula | 2025