Alexis de Chaunac

Up-and-coming artist Alexis de Chaunac, the grandson of renowned Mexican artist José Luis Cuevas, draws from religion, mythology, art history, politics, literature, and his own trilingualism and multiculturalism to produce exuberant, mixed-media drawings, through which, in his words, he “explore[s] the primitive aspects of the human being.” Born in New York and raised between the US, Mexico, and Paris, he grew up drawing in his grandfather’s studio and immersed in art in every medium. He describes drawing as “a transcendental language that anyone can understand,” and works quickly, producing rich, multilayered works, filled with faces and laden with references to psychoanalysis, ethnography, literature, Catholicism, and such artistic forebears as Francisco de Goya, Picasso, Francis Bacon, and his own grandfather. Though de Chaunac plans to pursue film, a medium with which he has recently begun to experiment, drawing remains at the heart of his practice.