"Self-Portrait 21.59" Drawing

Arthur Hent is a French contemporary artist whose work explores the relationship between geometry, inner energy, and identity.

For twenty years, he has developed a personal visual language based on lines and simple geometric forms. His creative process begins with a system of self-imposed rules—an algorithm designed to guide his hand without replacing it. Lines are repeated, combined, interrupted, and transformed, creating structures within which intuition, emotion, rhythm, color, and the energy of the moment can emerge.

Hent calls these works Self-Portraits. Rather than depicting his physical appearance, they record the inner forces passing through him at the moment of creation. Each drawing or painting becomes a unique abstract trace of a particular state of being.

This tension between system and spontaneity has been central to Hent’s practice since its beginnings. Geometry provides a framework, but the final work depends on everything that cannot be predetermined: the movement of the hand, the choice of material, variations in the line, color, intuition, and the artist’s inner state.

At the heart of his practice lies a fundamental question: what part of us can be structured, measured, or programmed, and what part remains irreducibly alive?

Through repetition, variation, and the physical act of drawing, Hent uses geometry not to represent the visible world, but to give form to invisible inner experience and to question the nature of identity as it continuously transforms over time.

Based in Nantes, France, his work is held in private collections in France and internationally and has been featured in a publication by the Benetton Foundation.