Philippe Pasqua |

Opera Gallery London is providing a complete insight into the art of self-taught French artist Philippe Pasqua through a broad collection of artworks featuring paintings, drawings and sculptures.

The show includes monumental provocative nudes, as well as sensual up close and personal portraits. There are also Pasqua’s signature large “palimpsests” – works on paper mixing silk-painting techniques, printing and painting, where the painter goes back over his own work and adds patches of colour to them or redesigns them.

Another major aspect of Pasqua’s work lies in his series of “vanities”. For years the artist has been collecting human skulls, which he covers in gold or silver leaf and decorates with butterflies with iridescent colours. Other gigantic skulls have been sculpted in Carrara marble, and tattooed with delicate motifs of imaginary flowers interleaved with mythical animals.