Nina Childress
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Born in 1961 in Pasadena (USA), Nina Childress lives and works in Paris. Her career began in 1981 with the creation of the punk band Lucrate Milk, in which she is an author and performer. The adventure will last three years and will lead them to participate in the sound section of the XIIth Biennale of Paris. Nina Childress then devoted herself exclusively to painting and joined the "Ripoulin Brothers" collective, which included Claude Closky and Pierre Huygue. Since then, she has not stopped painting and changing her style, between pop art and hyperrealism, hijacking clichés and research related to color.
She proceeds most often from photographs gleaned from the internet. Her very colorful palette, sometimes even fluorescent, allows her to revisit icons of popular culture, like here the idols of the seventies that are Sylvie Vartan, France Gall and Jane Birkin. By increasing the scale of these images, his portraits become "Big Heads" and lose their portrait quality to take on a dimension that is both abstract and ironic. They are presented here opposite the works of Sonia and Robert Delaunay who, more than 80 years ago, had already disconcerted their contemporaries with their energetic use of color.
The Self-portrait clown/flower completes the presentation of this ensemble. A recurring theme in the artist's practice, it was created during the summer of 2020. The make-up recalls the mask imposed by the sanitary conditions during the pandemic.
The acquisition of the "Big Heads" (Sylvie, France and Jane) was made possible by the International Committee of Friends of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
Since 2014, the Friends of the MAM have created three acquisition committees to serve the museum: the Committee for Photography, the International Committee and the Committee for Contemporary Creation. Thanks to donations from these committees, major works join the museum's collections each year.