Christine Safa

Biography

Christine Safa’s landscapes are painted from memory. In her portrait paintings, faces and mountains mingle, as do silhouettes and horizons. A landscape, stripped to the bare essentials, and vibrant. A warm palette evoking its Mediterranean origins. What it means to be here, simply but wholly, is what is being said, with evident empathy, by her sober and powerful paintings.

“I see my paintings as tributes, fragments of memories, that which remains. That’s what I paint: what’s left. As I paint, I give birth to the silhouette, the shape of the ruins of memories, which both welcome and endure time; and this, for me, means my experience of these inner landscapes. Figures appear, disappear, become a layer of paint. Color becomes saturated or it lets through light. A discernment of emotional states, dictated by the search of a familiar light.”

A graduate from the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, Safa participated in a group exhibition at Lévy Gorvy Gallery in Paris in 2021; in the same year, she had her first solo exhibition at Galerie Praz Delavallade. In 2022, she had a solo show at the ICA of Milan and was part of a group exhibition at the Pernod Ricard Foundation. In 2023, the Frac Auvergne de Clermont-Ferrand presented her solo exhibition.

The following public and private institutions have shown her work: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen (2025) ; Centre Pompidou-Metz (2025) ; MASC, Sables d’Olonne (2024); MOCO, Montpellier (2023); Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles (2023); Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole (2023); Musée Estrine, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (2023); Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris (2022); MUCEM, Marseille (2022); Fondation Boghossian, Bruxelles (2021).

In June 2024, Christine Safa was awarded the 13th Jean-François Prat contemporary painting prize.