Eliane Larus was born in 1944 in a small town situated in the west of France not far from the Atlantic ocean.

She was a laureate of the Leonardo da Vinci Prize for Plastic Arts. Her works are represented in over twenty museums and foundations in France, Switzerland, Spain and Holland.

PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS (selection):


1983 : Galerie L'OEil de Boeuf, Paris - 1984 : FIAC, Galerie L'OEil de Boeuf - 1985 : Galerie Atrium, Stockholm - Centre d'Exposition Canrobert, Jouy-en-Josas - 1986 : Galerie Jacqueline Moussion, Nantes et Carnac - Centre Culturel de Rochefort - 1987 : Galerie Jean-Paul Christophe, Paris - 1988 : Musée du Donjon, Niort - 1989 : Galerie Svetlana, Munich - 1990 : Galerie Bercovy-Fugier, Paris - ACAPA, Musée du Papier, Angoulême - 1992 : Galerie 15, Paris - 1993 : Galerie Claudine Lustman, Paris - 1994 : FIAC, Galerie 15 - Galerie du Théâtre, Brive - Galerie La Lune en Parachute, Epinal - 1996 : Galerie Le Troisième OEil, Bordeaux - Musée du Château, Noirmoutier - Galerie Virus, Anvers - Conseil Régional d'Aquitaine, Bordeaux - 1997 : Galerie Area, Galerie Le Cercle Bleu, Metz.
1998 : Villede Cerizay, Deux-Sèvres - 2000 : Galerie Capazza, Nançay - Théâtre du Lierre, Paris - 2001 : Galerie d’art contemporain de Bécheron, Saché.


GROUP EXHIBITIONS FROM 1986 (selection) :

1986 : Les Figurations de 1960 à nos jours, Musée de Dunkerque, Musée de Cagnes, Musée de Carcassonne - Basel Art Fair - 1987 : Kvindemuseet, Arhus, Danemark - Saga - Stockholm Art Fair - 1988 : Musée Géo-Charles, Echirolles - Galerie Lara Vinci, Paris - Designer's Saturday, Paris - Art Jonction, Nice - 1989 : Galerie Le Chanjour, Nice - Barcelona Art Forum - Gent Art Fair - Humour et Révolution, Cannes - Musée de Gerone - 1990 : Centre d'Art Contemporain de Rouen - Saga - 1991 : Découvertes, Paris - Saga - Séjour de trois mois au Mexique et Guatemala (bourse attribuée par le ministère des Affaires Etrangères) - 1992 : Biennale Internationale de Dakar - 1993 : FIAC, Paris, Galerie Claudine Lustman - Musée de la Poste, Paris - Saga - 1ère Biennale de Hendaye - 1994 : Des images pour la Paix, Halle de la Villette, Paris - Saga (éditeurs Area, Rabanelly, L'Atelier) - Centre Culturel du Mexique, Paris - Riquiqui, Galerie Satellite, Paris - 1995 : Les mots et le Visible, Galerie Artcurial, Paris - Participation à l'Atelier 1, La Source, Eure - 1996 : Vis à Visages, Fondation Coprim (Paris, Le Mans, Louvier, Saint-Etienne... ) - Musée d'Art Moderne de Troyes - Collection Novotel d'Art Contemporain, Paris - Saga (éditeurs Rabanelly, L'Atelier) - L'astrolabe, La Rochelle - La Ferme du Buisson, Marne la Vallée - Fondation Cartier : vente aux enchères au profit de l'Association La Source - 1997 : Galerie Quintessens, Utrecht - Centre Culturel du Mexique, Paris - Saga (éditeurs Area, Rabanelly, Lefor-Openo) - Les Romanes, Melle - Galerie Area, Paris - Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris -
1998 : Galerie Capazza, Nançay - Saga, Galerie Lefor-Openo -
Galerie Arenthon, Paris - 2000 : Racines, L’Art dans la ville,
Saint-Etienne - Portraits de Femmes, Le Temple, Chauray - Editions de l’Atelier Eric Seydoux, Le carré Saint Vincent, Orléans - Le Paysage, Fondation Coprim, Paris, Le Mans, Toulon, etc.

Public collections
Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris. Musée Galliéra, Paris. Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, Paris. Musée de Gerone. Miniature Museum of Contemporary Art, Amsterdam. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours. Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angoulême. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Besançon. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Niort. Musée Géo-Charles, Echirolles. Musée Bertrand, Châteauroux. Musée de Saint Dié des Vosges. Musée de Sarajevo. Collection Neuve Invention, Lausanne. Fondation Balenciaga, Paris. Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Valence. Musée du Donjon, Niort. Collection Novotel d'Art Contemporain. Collection du F.C.B.I., Bègles. Collection Ceres Franco, Lagrasse. Musée du Château, Noirmoutier. Artothèques de Reims, Nancy, Soissons, Angoulême, etc.

Jean Dubuffet wrote to her in a letter dated the 6th of May, 1981 :

"I see with pleasure that your works in the past year have actively developed and bloomed. The beautiful photographs that you showed me testify to this evolution. They are impressive. A real inventive spirit continually manifests itself in your works, starting with their conception and continuing throughout their execution. The paintings which bear witness to this spirit are delectable and full of discovery in all their details. They radiate much emotion that I feel strongly..."



Four Fragments



A funny thing happened on the way through our "Modern times" : the forward movement which characterised the period was compensated for -if one can say that- by a true return to what is primordial, an updating of deep traditions and of a particular past which had to be unearthed in ourselves as much as in our collective memory (or collective amnesia). On one hand the development of an increasingly conceptual art-form, increasingly "cosa mentale", in short : increasingly urban, and on the other hand, a call to the origins of being and a reactivating of the actual instinct to produce imagery in its timeless and cultureless spontaneity. Eliane Larus obviously belongs to the latter movement which is also a form of art-ecology.

Jean Clarence Lambert



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Eliane Larus is wary of the notion of naïve painting. "I don't want my figures to be naïve, but rather to be innocent." Her paintings and sculptures often evoke a universe which would have no idea of sin, feelings of guilt or desire for salvation. Fulfilled women, happy children, animals at liberty meet there, sometimes near a palm-tree. Eliane Larus'art revolves around a taste for ingenuousness, a love of innocence, a desire to rediscover a paradisiacal state, a longing to live as if it where always the first morning of the universe. Perhaps, when confronted with certain of her works, you will remember William Blake's "Songs of Innocence" (1789). For exemple you can reread :

When the painted birds laugh in the shade
Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread
Come live & be merry and join with me,
To sing the sweet chorus of Ha, Ha, He.

Gilbert Lascault



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Some works of Eliane Larus can be described as curiously classical owing to her choice of paint and the manner in which it is applied -transparencises obtained through "frottis" (rubbing) in turn appear sculpted by the surface grain of her work.

The surprising harmony of these dusty-pinks, rustic golds, bleached blues, ordinary hardware metal tones, applied to faces which have been torn open by some primitive chaos, creates, through a clash of contrast, a strange climate imbibed with a rare charm.

Michael Lecomte



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Bred from silex and from a star, these painting/sculptures are half-way between fallen asteroids and a disguised higher reality. This androgynous space of the real and the unreal belongs to a childhood world. Her figures which resemble children in their disproportioned heads and atrophied limbs, have eyes which discern in experience some form of intengible poetry, even in its most mundane aspects, anecdotal ("Four Penny Portrait", "The Fishing Expedition"). Her characters, whose sex is only discernable in their external appearence (features, hair, clothing), seem t ...

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