Eric MASSOLDER
Eric Massholder was born in 1960 in Heidelberg, in the southwest of Germany. He is a contemporary artist and painter and lives and works on the Côte d’Azur.
In his youth, Massholder discovered what he calls “the alchemy of painting” and became interested in the art of different cultures. He traveled and studied in Morocco, Sicily, Greece, Turkey and India, an experience that profoundly influenced his work.
His stay in France began in his maternal grandmother’s house on the Côte d’Azur, and the region became the center of his life in 1981, the year he began his studies at the Villa Arson in Nice. Between 1987 and 1989, he stayed in Paris thanks to the art dealer Frédéric Nocera, who provided him with a studio and an apartment in Vaugirard. During this time, he had the opportunity to work with Anne Lettrée before returning to the south of France.
Massholder draws inspiration from the artists of the early 20th century and the great masters such as Van Gogh, Picasso and Dali, constantly making new connections between them. In his own words: “I wanted to give Picasso the hand of Dali. This desire is the strength of my work”.
Massholder masters a range of techniques, from painting to sculpture and drawing to printmaking, and develops a variety of styles in his work, from primitivism to surrealism. Of Franco-German and Italian descent, he owes his Expressionism to his German father, his Impressionism to his French mother and his love of the Renaissance to his Florentine grandfather.
His work reveals an original, strange and fascinating universe that is constantly reinventing itself through the use of a varied palette and different techniques such as oil, pastel and ink.
In Massholder’s works, his longings, fears and dreams crystallize in a series of very different themes. These recurring themes take the form of symbolic and allegorical signs, such as the triangle, the sun, the moon, the fish, the peacock, the pyramid and the sphinx. Life and death are alluded to in the form of eggs and skulls. In this way, Massholder builds up a veritable iconographic vocabulary that deals with the trials and tribulations of society and in which his images resonate like proverbs. The shark, which equates the voracity of the business world with sexual power, and the dollar monster, which denounces the deadly world of international finance, are perfect examples.
Over the course of his career, Massholder has developed several series based on historical figures, places of worship or important literary texts. He draws inspiration from Vincent van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo, the historic Monte Verità mountain and works such as Dante’s Divine Comedy, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey or Goethe’s The Green Serpent and the Beautiful Lily.
His works have been exhibited in various European cities: Heidelberg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Nuremberg, Brussels, Ghent, Lausanne, Venice, Paris, Strasbourg, Nice and Monaco. In 1997 he won the Special Jury Prize at the Montreux Arts Festival. His luxurious, limited editions of illustrations of van Gogh’s letters can be found in the archives of renowned museums such as the MAMAC in Nice and the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris.