Carme Magem

Biography of CARME MAGEM

Catalan Carme Magem attended local and regional art schools at a very young age.

Painter and midwife, she did not want to choose between her two professions. Ink on rag paper, watercolor and above all collage and oil on canvas, her paintings bear witness to her mastery of techniques as much as to her fertile imagination.

PORTRAITS OF STARS AND SILHOUETTES, COLLAGES OF CARME MAGEM to see at the Galerie le Cube Vernet in Avignon

Arriving at figurative collage after years of drawing and oil painting, Carme Magem mixes collage and oil in a characteristic style of which she explores and experiments with all possibilities. Using recycled papers, newspapers, magazines and oil paints, she prefers to produce portraits and silhouettes of remarkable expressiveness. Carme Magem is most often inspired by mythical characters from cinema, art, social struggles… Dalí, Bogart, Grace Kelly, Hepburn, Lennon, Chaplin, Marilyn and many others appear in mixed media in her gallery of portraits.

CARME MAGEM: LIGHTS AND EMOTIONS IN MIXED TECHNIQUES exhibited at the Galerie le Cube Vernet in Avignon

"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. ", Confides the artist. Whether they are portraits, full-length figures or silhouettes, whether the subjects are famous, unknown or imaginary, Carme Magem's paintings have in common expressiveness: light, shadow and color trace the outline of a face or a silhouette to better highlight the body language, the attitude, the feelings of the subject, making touch these living emotions. Carme Magem has no equal in showing the vulnerability of the human body, mainly female, in motion. With respect and gentleness, always.

WITH CARME MAGEM, FRIDA KAHLO, VERMEER AND THE OTHERS are invited to the Galerie le Cube Vernet in Avignon

One of Carme Magem's great subjects is Frida Kahlo, this rebellious Mexican painter who also painted many portraits, most often self-portraits. So Carme Magem tirelessly glues and paints Frida in strikingly expressive performances, the same and different from one painting to another. If, according to André Breton, “the art of Frida Kahlo is a ribbon around a grave”, then the paintings of Carme Magem are a balm on our hectic lives: “I like to think that my work arouses harmony. , a dose of rest and pleasure for the senses, a space where the mind can travel to secret recesses of memory to discover new life, new colors and new light, ”she says correctly. Carme Magem also reinterprets Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring in several versions; art lovers will be surprised to find the clear light, the sparkle of the pendant, the wet point at the corner of the lips as on the original painting, reproduced by media that are however so different.

From Europe to New York, from the Persian Gulf to Singapore, from exhibitions to events, Carme Magem is today an artist known internationally to collectors and collectors.

Her collages also make the front cover of books and magazines.