From Paris to Shanghai…
Cécile Girard is a French artist born in Paris, now living in France and China.
She moved to Shanghai in 2009 to teach fine arts, where she works on her ink technique with contemporary and traditional Chinese painters, enriching her work.
Cécile has developed her unique teaching style through her experiences at international schools in France and China (Beijing and Shanghai).
Cécile studied painting and art history in Paris, at the Ecole Martenot, then at the Ecole du Louvre and the Sorbonne.
She discovered traditional painting in the 90s, when she studied calligraphy at the Beaux-arts in Beijing. At the same time, she joined the Yunnan Naxi painters’ art movement in Beijing, and collaborated with Naxi painter Zhang Chun He.
Cécile Girard’s painting style emphasizes the special treatment of materials – in particular rice paper, custom-made in China’s AnHui province.
Always keen to maintain a link with China, she perfected her mastery of traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy with painter Deanna Gao in Paris and with Professor and painter Li Ping at Shanghai University.
Her special Xuan paper technique combines Chinese ink, acrylic and oil in vivid, deep colors to produce a rich, dimensional artistic effect.
In Cécile’s works, we can perceive her perspectives on the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures through experimentation with interweaving: calligraphic style, pictogram, Chinese landscape painting, Zhongcai, and the art of stained glass she discovered in Italy.
A painter and teacher in Shanghai, she runs an art workshop for Chinese and foreign students of all ages, which enables her to exhibit regularly in China and France.
Her works have been collected by the Beijing Museum of Art and the Duolun Museum of Modern Art.
She has collaborated with the Shanghai World Expo Pavilion between 2012 and 2015 (“experimental open class”, exhibitions) and Shanghai Normal University (lectures, publications).
Highlights include solo exhibitions – with galleries at M50, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai; a joint exhibition, Ross Lewis and Cécile Girard in Conversation and a group show at ArtCN Gallery, Shanghai; and a joint exhibition with Chinese artists at China Central Academy of Fine Arts and Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts Xi’an.
In 2005, she was selected for the Années croisées France-Chine 2003-2005 and had a solo exhibition of her work at the Beijing Museum of Art. In 2014, Cécile took part in an exhibition at the Shanghai Mint Co Museum. She also took part in a group exhibition (in France and China) bringing together Chinese and French artists as part of the 50th anniversary of France-China relations.
Since 2019, Cécile has been collaborating with the Galerie XiXi YiDE Art Museum in China. A permanent exhibition of Cécile’s work is presented there.
Since 2022, Cécile has been collaborating with Galerie Feng Shang in France, where she is artist-in-residence. Three exhibitions were organized as part of this collaboration in 2022 and 2023.
