Mathieu Zeitindjioglou

I see art as a universal language, which allows people from different cultures, to communicate with each other. Very influenced by symbolism and figurative art, I particularly like the world of surrealists. But it is not only in the codes of the surrealism that I draw my inspiration from. I like to let a part of poetry and melancholy in my works.
Oil painting has always been my favorite medium, because it requires rigor, technique and flexibility. My work can be depicted as figurative art, although it is highly symbolistic. My paintings depict loved ones, friends, relatives or myself, in often tragic or violent situations. Like an investigation that is offered to the spectators, my work is an enigma to be elucidated. A journey to the heart of my most intimate anxieties and questions, in the form of figurative allegories with multiple symbolic keys.
My paintings essentially questions the incomprehension of Western man facing death. A “mismatched” event, according to the expression of Vladimir Jankélévitch, which has been, since the origins of humanity, a pressing invitation to think, and which today seems to have lost its questioning force.

Born in 1972 in the suburbs of Paris, I draw and paint from an early age. Coming from a difficult background, I do not plan to engage in an artistic career. I then began studying economics and finance - a form of modern philosophy to understand the world - before turning definitively towards my passion for images by starting a career in the film industry. Alternately producer, director, editor and artistic director, for my own films, but also for other directors, I have never stopped devoting myself, in parallel, to painting and drawing. My drawings allow me to make animated films, and my first feature film "The Son of the Olive Merchant", released in cinemas in 2012, will mix animated film and initiatory road-movie to talk about the denial of the Armenian Genocide.

My technical and artistic palette has thus been enriched by this journey and encounters which have led me to develop a complex universe, without concession, but always assumed, to tend towards a committed and meaningful art. However, painting will always remain my privileged means of expression, the most suitable for weaning my quest for meaning.

ART CAPITAL 2015 - Paris, le Grand Palais.
SALON D'AUTOMNE 2022 - Paris, Grande Halle de la Villette