Pierre Pivet was born in Normandy in 1948.  At the age of five, he leaves his native countryside for Paris.  His family of modest means and origin being neither inclined to help him get an education nor interested in the Arts, Pierre Pivet’s future appears somewhat bleak.  The young Pierre dreams of “reasonable” conventional jobs… while spending most of his spare time drawing and painting.  He starts reading all the books on painting and great masters that come across his way and tirelessly visits museums and exhibitions with his brother Rémi.  In 1972, he gives up his job as a computer analyst to dedicate all his time to painting and travelling, mostly in North Americas and Morocco.  He complements his self-taught artistic education with four year of study at the Académie Port-Royal, in Paris, where he is awarded the first prize in 1976.  In 1983, Pierre Pivet settles in Montreal, where he still lives and works between regular trips abroad.  Mr. Pivet’s paintings are on permanent exhibit in reputable North American and European galleries.  Over the last years, both private collectors and companies have shown a growing interest in his work, entrusting him with increasingly important projects.

Pierre Pivet
by Jules Arbec (article published in Guide Parcours, Canadian art magazine)

The stages that lead to maturity differ from one artist to another. According to Pierre Pivet, the term "maturity" is not quite appropriate since it evokes a sense of having arrived. For Pivet, all artistic endeavour is a process of continual questioning that furthers one on the path to authenticity - the concordance of the artist's primary intention with its resulting artistic expression. Although total authenticity can never be fully attained, it serves well as an ultimate goal, one that Pierre Pivet constantly contemplates and strives for.

Initially fettered by the weight of academic instruction, Pivet managed to liberate himself from his overly rigid schooling while maintaining many of its positive elements. The great names of painting are his real teachers: his artistic endeavours have been nourished in turn by Rembrandt, Vermeer and el Greco. The rendering of light characteristic of Rembrandt, and the lively lyrical strokes of el Greco served as initial guides. He then became enraptured with Cézanne whose prescribed forms and voluminous consistency are, in their strictness and rendering, reminiscent of the Flemish masters who had previously influenced him. Next came Braque, re-orienting his conception of space and design, transformations which Gauguin and especially Matisse were no strangers to in their time.

But although we can talk about influences, Pivet's approach is more reminiscent of a collection of thoughts and sensibilities that unite creators on a level well beyond those of generation or aesthetic. The artist has been able to integrate and amalgamate diverse tendencies - the resulting images both surprise and jostle our standard references - by containing his subject matter in an intimate space that seems folded in on itself, but that also develops from the inside through the fragmentation of different images, all united by colour. In this intimate space, objects speak out in subdued light, as if whispering, as if really important things can only be uttered without being spelled out. In this way a dialog is established between personages and the objects the artist has a particular affection for. Pivet's works, which have erroneously been called examples of "still life", take on a very living expression. In addition, all Pivet's canvasses reflect a human presence, even if the beings seem absent, because the objects they contain invariably refer to the omnipresent human element. One could talk about an "absent presence" or vice versa, but Pivet does not place much importance on such distinctions - his works strive above all to capture reality in a simple and direct way. This does not, however, exclude some measure of the symbolic. In fact the artist maintains a certain distance between himself and the objects or people he represents, a distance that actually allows for a better appreciation of reality. By creating space between himself and his work he promotes his own autonomy.

Colours are of primordial importance in Pivet's work. The different chromatic tones he has retained from the Fauvist period contribute to the construction of image frames that fragment the canvass surface. Here, light assumes its full dimension and almost becomes the very breath of the work. In painting after painting we find these luminous gaps where light springs forth to caress forms and endow them with an active presence. In his recent works, light emanates directly from the forms rather than the other way around, giving the paintings an interior quality, a density of expression that go far beyond the subject matter that is evoked. Through his painting, Pivet offers us both the right and wrong sides of a reality that has yet to be grasped.