Thomas Lévy-Lasne is an artist of many roles and talents, not just painting and drawing, but also directing and acting in films, writing regular articles about the arts, and organising innovate events to excite people about the world of creativity.

He is very much a Parisian, having grown up in the city, graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 2004, and still living and working in his favourite urban environment.

He is best known for his ultra-realistic paintings of everything from city streets to still life, landscapes to domestic scenes. As he writes of his work, ‘My subject is reality – I like to confront the viewer with the canvas that is reality. Anything can be a subject for painting. The challenge is to find interest in a subject which at first glance doesn’t necessarily have any interest. Once I’ve chosen my subject I try to recreate it as faithfully and as finely as possible, to ensure that what seems banal is no longer so, to give people the opportunity to look at it differently. This seems very relevant to me, insofar as astonishment at the world is a real delight, and hatred of reality is an unfortunate symptom of our times. My painting thus acts as a sort of reality enhancer, injecting life where we no longer necessarily see it. With what seems like an ultra-banal subject, I put heart and time into painting it in the hope of giving it a freshness both for myself and for the viewer.’

In 2014, together with the painter Marc Molk, he organised a conference titled ‘The Paint Factory’ at the Collège de France; then in 2019 another conference ‘The Vitality of Contemporary Painting: The French Scene’, presenting 125 living painters in less than two hours in the form of speed dating. In 2021 he curated an exhibition in Perpignan titled ‘Appearances’, an exhibition of fifty living painters, which led to a YouTube channel interviewing the painters from the exhibition.

On the film front, in 2011 he played the leading role in the award-winning film Vilaine fille, mauvais garçon (Naughty Girl, Bad Boy), directed by Justine Triet, inspired by her life and her paintings. In 2017 he directed Le collectionneur (The Collector), his first short film, with Benoît Forgeard and Pierre Jouan.

He is also known as a regular contributor to the fine arts pages of the fashion magazine CitizenK.

Thomas Lévy-Lasne’s website is here, and his Facebook page here.

We are very grateful to our Russian friend Yuri for introducing us to the work of this artist.