Albert PALMA

ARTISTIC CAREER AND APPROACH

Born in Bône, Algeria in 1947, Albert Palma lives and works in Paris. At the age of 20, he left for Sweden where he worked as a lumberjack while studying literature and art history. In 1975, back in Paris where he led a bohemian life, he suffered a serious accident on the set of L'Affiche Rouge by Frank Cassenti: his lungs were burned and the after-effects left him largely deaf. He found his second wind in Japan. From 1981 to 1990, he lived in Tokyo, was introduced to the Martial Arts by Aoki Hiroyuki, Karate master and founder of Shintaïdô, and obtained an instructor's diploma. He is also a professor of comparative culture and French literature at the University of Tsukuba. He returned to France in the early 1990s, founded the Société des Gens de Gestes and developed an anthropology of gesture through the practice of the "Voie des Arts". His meeting with the writer and poet Henry Bauchau in 2001 was the beginning of a fertile "working friendship". In 2003, he produced his first paintings, and from 2006 his works have been regularly exhibited. Albert Palma received the Henry Bauchau Prize in 2013, awarded at the Royal Academy of Belgium.

His drawings are present in the public collections of the Museum of Fine Arts of Cambrai, the Library of Uzès, the Royal Museum of Literature of Brussels, the Catholic University of Louvain-La-Neuve, as well as in several private collections in France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and the United States.

" His works are distinguished by a strong particularity: they are done freehand, most of the time with a pen. Albert Palma sometimes remains bent over a board for up to 72 hours at a time, the completion of which requires some 100,000 strokes. They are only points, traces and lines, but a patient breath carries them along in concert. A dance of the hand reveals original landscapes, elements of the world, with interpretations that are always renewed."

Philippe Nassif

"Albert Palma's works, both concrete and abstract, function like mandalas, and are the seat of profound and shareable experiences."

Baldine Saint Girons