PAUL-CLÉMENT DAMBIER

born in 1995

A CLASSICAL TRAINING

In 2014 when Paul-Clément Dambier, then aged 18, travelled to Saint-Tropez to meet the museum curator and jewellery designer Jean-Pierre Michel, he could hardly have dreamt that four years later he would have created a dozen or so bronze sculptures as well as numerous drawings and paintings. This first meeting immediately convinced Jean-Pierre Michel to work with Paul-Clément to give him an in-depth understanding of traditional craftsmanship and techniques of painting, as well as techniques of conservation and restoration of artworks on paper.

Paul-Clément follows classical principles of painting leading him quite naturally to sculpture, a discipline in which elaborate and meaningful forms are constantly modified and enriched by detailed drawings. The constant interaction between meaning and its expression allows the work always to maintain legitimacy as it unfolds.

His rigorous apprenticeship has taught Paul-Clément to prepare his canvasses and develop his pictorial mediums to his liking, including grinding his own pigments and mixing his own oils. Moreover, in the classical tradition, he insists on personally mounting and framing his works to reflect his own taste and to meet museum conservation standards. He pays particular attention to the framing as it represents an essential architectural component of his work and creates a spiritual boundary around it.

EXHIBITION

In 2020, seduced by his work, the Torre e Tasso family is presenting within the permanent collections of the Castle of Duino the first exhibition of the artist’s works. This will enable the artist to share in a long tradition of patronage of the arts initiated and perpetuated by the Torre e Tasso family, a family whose roots go back to the very birth of Europe, from the Torquato Tasso through Charles V to Napoléon.

It is from the top of the cliffs where the Castle of Duino overlooks the Adriatic Sea that many artists have found inspiration. Indeed, it was here that the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, invited by the Princess della Torre e Tasso, composed the first verses of his poem “The Duino Elegies “.