Gérard Alary

Gérard Alary layers thick fields of oil paint in highly expressive, gestural works that teeter between figuration and abstraction. Alary’s figurative content orbits around themes of death, placing him within a long lineage of artists engaged with the theme. Rather than dealing in metaphorical content or depicting scenes of death, Alary paints skulls and bones—desiccated imagery that contrasts with the rich, wet oil paint on the canvas. These thick globs of paint are applied with uninhibited strokes to heighten the macabre, even violent, mood of his works, which feature a limited palette of black, grey, white, and red.