Gisèle Cazilhac

The south of France is the homeland of the Figuration libre (free style), art movement of the 1980ies, representated by Robert Combas, Hervé di Rosa, Rémi Blanchard, François Boisrond... Gisèle Cazilhac might have been associated to it if it had been opened to the women. She might have been too young, but she already painted. She always worked with energy, blasting colors, sense of humour, references to the modern culture (comics, street art, paint spray...). Largely out of the marked circuit, she follows her way.

Though Gisèle Cazilhac doesn't live from her painting, she is a professionnal artist. She studied arts, she always painted and her work has its own life. It evolved. Gisèle Cazilhac explored space by launching cars, planes, divers, swimmers. She dealt with the passage of time with multi-generational landscapes. She plays with perspective, orchestrating delicate intercrossings, adopting a view from above or from below. Amongst her better known subjects: people on the beach, swimmers, female divers in the sky, clotheslines, girls playing hopscotch, families, weddings.

The law on same-sex marriage (17 May 2013) inspired her variations on ancient wedding photographies: the "gais mariages". She kept the attitudes and postures, and changed the faces. She maried herself to a young Brigitte Bardot. On her "Noces de cuivres" (allusion to the copper wedding aniversary), faces are replaced by copper musical instruments.

When there her personages have faces, they are serene, at peace with the world, or even happily smiling. This isn't a naive, easy painting at all. This is a vibrantly passionnate painting, based on pleasure and communicating pleasure. A peaceful pleasure pure from guilt? On one of her "Amourades", she painted Snow White and the Queen ready for a luncheon on the grass, the naked Snow White, as the Eve of Lucas Cranach, proposes the apple to the Queen-Adam. Poisonned apple? Interesting way to solve the mother-daughter conflict: allowing women to innerly kill their mother or kill their inner mother. The interpretation is wide-open, of course.

A few articles, in french:
Fantasque Cazilhac, by Virginie Moreau
Gisèle Cazilhac épouse la cause du mariage à Montpellier, by Virginie Moreau
Gisèle Cazilhac, gais mariages (Jtduoff)
Gisèle Cazilhac, une vie d'artiste (La voie domitienne n°33, été 2000)
And a video