NICOLAS LEFEBVRE

Lefebvre started travelling from a young age and it was on a trip to Africa that the artist discovered the magic of local handmade artefacts. His first job with art dealer Jacques Lacoste sent him on research trips to Peru, during which time Lefebvre became closely acquainted with primitive and naive arts. Upon his return to Paris, Lefebvre continued working with antiques dealer Axel Vervoordt and then auctioneer Maître Binoche, organising Primitive Art sales and subsequently sharpening his knowledge and enriching his own collection of ancient objects. In 2008, Lefebvre moved to the south of France and opened up his own gallery, or ‘cabinet of curiosities,’ inspired by the surrealist likes of André Bretton, Jean Dubuffet and Jean Cocteau.

A compulsive hunter of objects, Lefebvre collects relics produced by different cultures from different periods across the globe and repurposes them as new objects of art. An antique Egyptian eye and pre-Columbian pliers, an Amazonian headdress and Nigerian coins, a Khmer mirror and a Berber tent peg: these are just some of the improbable associations created by Lefebvre. A common motif in Lefebvre’s work is the mother goddess, a protective and kindly deity. Lefebvre relishes in the beauty of aged objects, and in his creative process, he unites Nature to Man (a tree trunk, a whale rib with an African coin from the 18th century) as well as Man to Man (a dome of a church model from the 19th with an Ethiopian Koran table from the 18th).

Lefebvre studied art history at the École du Louvre and has exhibited extensively in France. Lefebvre’s constantly evolving work now embraces new forms: monumentality, in-situ, scenography, illustration and photography.

Courtesy Tristan Hoare Gallery