LE CHEVALLIER, FROM PAINTER TO FARMER
Williams Viera
“Semana News”
Houston, Texas
10-16 August, 2001, p. 45

(Translated from Spanish)

Houston, TX – Houston will be adorned during two months with over 300 bovines, used as canvases by multiple artists, among them this French painter who is having great success in New York City.

Did you know that cows could be painted? No? Well, neither did us. Let’s get this clear, we can paint paintings and murals, but cows? That is why when they asked Georges Le Chevallier to paint one of these cows, he thought the whole idea was crazy.

Do not think, however, that we are talking about painting steaks and fajitas on four legs, but cows made out fiberglass.

Le Chevallier received the invitation in New York City, a multicultural city where the people respond enthusiastically to vanguard art movements. “When I saw the invitation for the first time, I thought it was to paint real cows. What a cool idea !” explains Le Chevallier. “ I never thought it was to paint sculptures of cows. Originally I was not going to do it, because I could not come up with an idea that I liked”

Less than a week before the deadline, he painted a cow full of tattoos.

“I was still thinking about the idea of how a real cow would look like painted. I did a drawing and sent it. At first I thought the tattoo theme would not be accepted, but in the end it became a success. That is why I will be in Houston.”

Cow Parade will be an outside exhibition that will start on September 6. One will be able to see cows “whose painted bodies will establish as truth the metaphor of multiple painting styles battling each other” said Le Chevallier. “I am sure that we, the painters, are asking the viewers to compare them, to see how easy different styles of painting can coexist next to each other”.

Who is Le Chevallier?

Well, this painter was born in Paris (France). He is the son of a Puerto Rican mother (Mary) and a French father (Michel), loves soccer, and travels the World to learn everything “because I am a globetrotter” he said.

Le Chevallier has exhibited his art works in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Mexico, Japan, Puerto Rico and Spain.

“The principal objective of my latest work is to reach through a play of textures, lines, colors and shapes, a visual harmony based on contradiction”, he explained. “I unite the organic with the geometric, the spiritual with the intellectual, and the spontaneous with the premeditated. I want to reach a solidification of contradictions. To join the impossible”.

Steffany Martz, Gallery Director and Art Critic in New York City, says that there are two aspects of Le Chevallier’s works that are important:

“This concern with textures is, in fact, one of the most salient characteristics of the work. It is this plastic quality, the texture of the paint, that is enhanced by the use of the so-called non-art materials. The sand, burlap and coffee bags do more than add texture to the work, however. Their introduction also brings the real world into the picture. The real world with its multiplicity of images and information; the real world with its fragmented experience. These paintings may be abstract, but their thematic concerns are very much in the kingdom of concrete reality”.

Like a good World traveler, Le Chevallier likes soccer, speaks four languages (English, Spanish, French, and Italian) and is brave enough to say that “Picasso is to paint what Pele is to soccer: the best. I have also appreciate the work of Miquel Barcelo, a Spanish painter that at this moment is painting thing that interest me”.

So now you know it. Get ready because Cow Parade is coming, and you will be able to see the latest from artists in the United States.