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The artistic work of François Hilsum reflects the main picturial currents which, between Paris and New York, have marked the twentieth century, and as such has contributed to affirming the continuing vitality of contemporary painting.

Born in Paris, and having spent the bulk of his creative life there, several years ago Hilsum moved his atelier to Vetheuil from which he has a splendid view of the houses in which Claude Monet and Joan Mitchell had their studios. From secluded perch in the Seine Valley he contemplates the moods of the river, absorbs a protean luminosity, and listens to the melodies of the wind as he captures, with his brush strokes, eternal images of nature and feminity.

Over the last years, this reknown French artist's work has been shown in over thirty expositions in Paris, New York, Bruxelles, Zurich, Beyruth, Hong-Kong, Osaka and in 2004 ROMA (National Gallery of Modern Art-Libreria SACS en a Galleria Officina 14. His paintings have been exhibited in Paris, in the Orangerie of the Senate and in the Halls of the National Assembly.


The international dictionary of painters and scupltors (Bénézit 1999) carries the following entry:"Hilsum's painting moves from nature to abstraction, unfolding the initial theme in a series of colored and rhythmic variations, at once spacious and regular, sometimes jazzed up, always decorative. Standing in a long tradition of (ut pictura poesis) and in the spirit of either Baudelaire or breton, François Hilsum is driven to capture correspondences between his compositions and poems whose metaphores render the intentions of "painted works" more faithfully than other forms of discourse"