Sophie Geider

I grew up between the beaches and landscapes of Gauguin, the Pacific light, the vivid colours, the unhurried rhythm of Polynesia. Today I live in Marseille, where I find echoes of that same warmth in the southern sun and the nearby sea.
I paint women who are almost hidden. Languid figures, backs turned, faces erased, fabrics caught mid-movement in shimmering colours. My canvases never tell the whole story, they leave space for the viewer to imagine what comes next. Often the women are cropped by the frame, or they reach toward each other across paintings, quietly answering one another.
Each work is built in layers (acrylic, oil, gold leaf, natural pigments) on canvas, wood, or handmade papers brought back from Indonesia, where I spend time each year. I choose my materials the way others choose words: for what they carry.
My series include Histoires d'eaux (water, memory, origins), Vague à l'âme (inner currents, shaped by years of surfing), and Passages and Entre Deux (thresholds, suspended moments). All of them circle the same question: what can be felt but not said.
I hold a professional certification in art therapy and have led humanitarian art projects in Southeast Asia and Colombia. I believe painting heals, in the studio, and ...

My deepest influences are Gauguin, for his colours and the raw force of his artistic journey, and Bonnard, whose golden, vibrant, intimately warm tones and surprising framings feel close to my own sensibility. Joaquín Sorolla draws me in for the light and delicacy that saturate his canvases.
I am also drawn to the precious, almost sacred quality of painting in the work of Gustav Klimt and Odilon Redon. Among contemporary artists, I admire Pierre Soulages for his refined mastery of blacks and matter, and Fabienne Verdier for the breath and Asian soul that moves through her large-scale works.
In my practice, I work in ink and watercolour for smaller formats, and in acrylic and oil for larger canvases. I also explore different wood species, both as a surface to paint on and as a framing material, drawn to the memory and texture each essence carries.

Selected exhibitions — Marseille and South of France, 1999–2025
2025 – Mers Intérieures – Cave Bistrot Victor – Marseille – France
2024 – Ors – Cave Bistrot Victor – Marseille – France
2023 – Surf Art Session – Galerie 1809 – Marseille – France
2022 – Histoires d'eaux – Massilia Surf Shop – Marseille – France
2021 – Vagues – ESP Surfboards – Gignac-la-Nerthe – France
2021 – Glisse – Galerie 1809 – Marseille – France
2019 – Plonger – Espigas – Marseille – France
2018 – Immanence – Maison Montgrand – Marseille – France
2018 – Inspirations – Galerie du Passage de l'Art – Marseille – France
2016 – Salon d'Art Contemporain SM'ART – Aix-en-Provence – France
2016 – Rêve – Hôtel Edmond Rostand – Marseille – France
2013 – Entrevoir – Hôtel Sofitel Vieux Port – Marseille – France
2011 – Entrevoir – Hôtel Pullman Palm Beach – Marseille – France
2011 – Domaine de Château Roubine – Lorgues – France
2010 – Galeries Lafayette – Marseille – France
2008 – Galerie Anikado – Saint-Rémy-de-Provence – France
2007 – Salon des Globe Trotters – Avignon – France
2000/2001 – Palais Longchamp – Marseille – France
2000 – Forum Femmes Méditerranée UNESCO – Marseille – France