Guy de Malherbe
NEWS
Late opening Wednesday, May 6: Artist talk and screening from 6 pm to 8 pm
As part of Paris Gallery Weekend, Autres Rivages, artist talk at Galerie La Forest Divonne, Paris, Sunday, May 31, 2026 (4 pm–6 pm)
Autres Rivages, solo exhibition, Galerie La Forest Divonne, Paris, April 16 – June 6, 2026
Born in 1958 to an Argentine mother and a Franco-British father, Guy de Malherbe lives and works between his two studios in Paris and the Loir Valley. In his youth, he was deeply influenced by the work of Dalí, discovered during childhood in Cadaqués, whose steep rocks plunging into the sea fascinated him. Later, the coastline of the Costa Brava, the cliffs of Étretat in Normandy, and the Perito Moreno glaciers in Argentina became his preferred subjects, onto which he projects his inner world, constructing a highly gestural painting marked by thick, sensual materiality.
Numerous art historians have written about his work, including Olivier Kaeppelin, Pierre Wat, Claude Frontisi, Alain Bonfand, and Olivier Delavallade, as well as writers Franck Maubert, Patrick Cloux, and the poet Luis Mizón. Their perspectives shed light on the surrealist lineage of his work, initially influenced by the worlds of Dalí and Buñuel, from which he gradually distanced himself over the course of his career, retaining primarily an interest in the mineral world. Deeply rooted in materiality and in the pleasure of gesture, Guy de Malherbe’s work emerges through the writings of these authors as an intellectually rich painting, imbued with references to art history and nourished by the subconscious.
Guy de Malherbe’s works are held in national collections (CNAP, the Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins, and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), and numerous museums have devoted solo exhibitions to his work, including the Musée du Mans, Musée d’Évreux, Musée de Trouville, Abbaye de l’Épau, and the Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. His work has also been regularly exhibited in the United States. He is represented in Switzerland by Galerie Ditesheim-Maffei, and in France and Belgium by Galerie La Forest Divonne.
In 2024, the Grand Manège in Vendôme organized a major monographic exhibition dedicated to him, bringing together more than one hundred paintings and around thirty works on paper. At the end of last year, the prestigious publisher Skira devoted an important monograph to him, retracing the entirety of his career, while Éditions L’Atelier Contemporain is currently preparing the publication of his studio “notes,” scheduled for release this year.
