In 2004, Lukáš KÁNDL, painter, and his wife Françoise, make the following observation: Contemporary art is confiscating the word "Art" in its favor for rendering it meaningless. They decide to react to its ideology: subversion and scandal, denial of beauty, art deconstruction, financial speculation, skill replaced by speech, violation of artistic standards, rugged individualism.

 

Confident in reversing this trend, Kándl, leader of magic realism in France, being a great lover of this literary movement, they decide to bring together the best international painters of magic realism around a set of fundamental values: openness, sharing, team spirit, quality and technical virtuosity in the craft, and they launch a new artistic movement, "Libellule, Contemporary Renaissance" that will remain in the history of art, testimony to the existence of another facet of art practiced in the 21st century by living artists, so too contemporary.

 

KÁNDL imposes an annual theme and format to members of Libellule in order to present a new collection at Comparaisons salon, held every year at the Grand Palais in Paris. Françoise then takes care of circulating collections worldwide.

Today, Libellule brings together about thirty painters originating in twenty countries and three different continents, offering the public access to an exceptional portfolio of current best magic realistic paintings worldwide.

 

The first collection, "Ange exquis", was released in 2006. Then came "Exclamations!" - 2007, "Divine Comedy" -  2008, "Black and White" - 2009, "One Million Dollars Banknotes" - 2010, "Phoenix and Dragons" - 2011, " Zodiac" - 2012," Tribute to Old Masters" - 2013, "The horse in all states" - 2014, "Self Portrait", our tenth collection - 2015.

 

Artists working together for a number of year is very rare in the history of art. Of course some have already exhibited together, but rarely on a given topic, and, to our knowledge, never on a set format. Besides, these collectives have frequently broken out quickly enough, as the artists are by nature rather individualistic. The international dimension of the group, another rare element in art history, allows the public to discover the specificities of different cultures on specific topics related to the evolution of our society.

For 10 years, members of Libellule are working on common themes and formats: works are specially created for each collection, size oblige! They told us that this adventure is very exciting, the artists trying to still surprise each other!

                                                                                                                       

Françoise Kándl