There are 64 artworks.
MAGEM
A Catalan artist who divides her time between painting and her work as a midwife, Carme Magem has developed a figurative collage art fused with oil on canvas, using recycled papers, newspapers and magazines. A portraitist chiefly of women, she pays tribute to cinema icons from the 1920s to the 1960s and, since a trip to Japan in 2023, to the geishas of Kyoto's Gion district, with a delicacy that reveals the full vulnerability of the body in motion. Discover her world at Galerie Le Cube Vernet, in Avignon.
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Biographie
Carme Magem, Collage and Oil Portraits | Galerie Le Cube Vernet
Catalan artist Carme Magem is presented by Galerie Le Cube Vernet in Avignon. Her collage and oil-on-canvas portraits, often of women, pay tribute to icons of cinema, art and social struggles.
A Catalan Artist Between Painting and Collage
Carme Magem developed a passion for art at a very young age and attended local and regional art schools. Alongside her art, she works as a midwife, refusing to choose between her two vocations. Ink on rag paper, watercolour, oil on canvas and above all collage: her practice shows both her technical mastery and her fertile imagination.
Portraits and Silhouettes: a Singular Technique
After years of drawing and oil painting, Carme Magem turned to figurative collage, which she merges with oil on canvas to create a personal and expressive style. Using recycled papers, newspapers and magazines, she mainly produces portraits and silhouettes of remarkable expressiveness.
Her works pay tribute to iconic figures of cinema, art and social struggles: Dalí, Bogart, Grace Kelly, Hepburn, Lennon, Chaplin, Marilyn… iconic faces she reinterprets through her mixed technique.
Light and Emotion in Mixed Media
"Collage attracts me powerfully, captivates me, entertains me and constantly surprises me in the process of creation. It allows, starting from a familiar face, a thousand readings and unusual emotions," says the artist. Portraits, full-length figures or silhouettes, famous, unknown or imaginary subjects: light, shadow and colour trace the outline of a face or body to highlight the attitude and feelings of her sitters.
Carme Magem excels at revealing the vulnerability of the human body in motion, mainly the female body. Always with respect and gentleness.
The Female Portrait Revisited
Above all a portraitist of women, Carme Magem creates collage and oil-on-canvas portraits of iconic film personalities from the 1920s to the 1960s. After travelling to Japan in 2023, she added striking portraits of geishas seen in Gion, the geisha district of Kyoto.
Frida Kahlo, the rebellious Mexican painter who herself painted many self-portraits, is one of her great subjects: Carme Magem tirelessly glues and paints her, the same yet different from one work to the next. She also reinterprets Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring in several versions, keeping the clear light, the sparkle of the pendant and the moist touch at the corner of the lips.
The radiance, softness and charm of her sitters' expressions, always treated with kindness in a colourist style, strike every viewer. The harmony between collaged motifs and colour range appeals to art lovers and collectors. The artist likes to think that her work brings harmony and offers a space where the mind can travel into the hidden corners of memory.
International Recognition
From Europe to New York, from the Persian Gulf to Singapore, Carme Magem is now an internationally recognised artist. Her collages also appear on the covers of books and magazines.
Carme Magem at Galerie Le Cube Vernet, Avignon
Discover Carme Magem's collages and paintings at Galerie Le Cube Vernet, in the heart of Avignon, and in our online shop.