French artist Henri Barande makes rare showing in London

Reclusive French artist Henri Barande, who hid his paintings and sculptures from the world for half a century, is staging a rare exhibition in London this week — but maintains his hard-fought air of mystery.

Barande does not sign his works, nor are they for sale, and when interviewed by AFP at the start of his show at the Saatchi Gallery, he refused to be photographed, recorded, or even divulge the date of his birthday.

“My intention was always to be unknown, at a distance,” he said, wearing a black leather jacket and glasses.

Born in Casablanca, in Morocco, raised in Tunisia and a resident of Switzerland, for most of his life Barande was a successful businessman — with nobody in the outside world knowing his true calling.

He was “discovered” by art critic David Galloway, who first entered his studio in the middle of an industrial zone outside Lausanne in Switzerland 17 years ago.

“I was confronted with some of the most exciting work I’ve probably ever seen as an art critic. A magic kingdom, an Aladdin’s cave,” Galloway, who is curating his London show, told AFP.

“At the time he had produced over 40,000 sculptures — and he was completely unknown.”

Barande was in the process of switching to painting, using giant canvasses of 2.5 metres high, while destroying or burying many of his previous works.

He consented to a New York Times article about him in 2000, to coincide with a show at Sotheby’s in Zurich, but has resisted stepping fully into the limelight.

The article said he was 55 years old when he was discovered.

A show in Geneva followed, his first under his real name. “It felt like a compromise,” the artist said. Another followed in Paris in 2011, and now London.

– In the ruins of Carthage –

Barande never sells his work, giving him a rare artistic independence — a fact made possible by accruing a large private fortune through selling an employment agency.

Far from selling his sculptures, he destroys many of them.

“The idea from the start was to destroy or to bury” his work, with the hope that it would be “discovered, perhaps, in several thousand years”, like an ancient civilisation, he said.

This eccentricity can be attributed to growing up in Tunisia, near the ruins of the ancient city of Carthage.

“Destruction is a big part of creation,” he said.

The past plays an important part of his work, but the London exhibition displays diverse influences, from Gustav Klimt to cave paintings and basketball player Michael Jordan.

Barande says he does not regret his exposure.

“At some point you must open yourself to the outside world. I’m happy that it has happened as it has, and happy that it makes people around me happy. But I won’t go further,” he said.

After London — his first and last exhibition in Britain, which runs to October 31 — Barande warns he will not return to the public eye for another four or five years.

“I don’t do many exhibitions, it takes up too much time, and during that time I don’t work,” he said.

And it is important that he keeps working, saying: “I’m at the beginning, not at the end of my work.”

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