François-Marie Banier

François-Marie Banier is an artist who has photographed with unusual intensity, through the body and face of persons chosen intentionally or casually, life in the splendour of its beauty and the melancholy of its decadence. While we had never met, I knew his work from books and exhibitions catalogues. After a brief meeting in Milan the decision to expand the original project was immediate and natural, and we have thus organised an anthological exhibition at the Triennale, which is mainly focused on his photographic work, and a solo show at the Mudima Foundation which principally features his paintings, to which he has dedicated most of his artistic research in recent years. Large photographic images, recounted as in a diary of memories, have been re-invented by the felicitous superimposition of pictorial elements by the artist. This is a unique opportunity, due to its visual quality, to familiarise with a creative adventure which has by now lasted forty years, and which the artist still continues, never satisfied, still searching for new inspiration. We would like to thank the artist, the Milan Triennale and the Centre Culturel Français de Milan for making this initiative possible.