Nicolas Foster

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Nicolas Foster: painter, author and musician. Date of birth 1960, raised in Paris, France. Nicolas Foster began drawing and painting at the age of 13. After attending Académie Baudry and then sharing a studio for one year with French painter Louis Fachat, Nicolas Foster Bécourt was admitted into the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, the most respected art school in France. He studied and revered the work of the old masters. For years he was “under the spell of Rembrandt,” as he describes in his book, “L’oeil, la Main et la Voix du Peintre.” However, his love for the old masters did not prevent him from appreciating the dramatic developments of 20th century art; Nicolas Foster loves all great painting, whether ancient or modern. In his own words:

My tastes in painting, as in music or poetry, have always been very eclectic. The Maestà painted by Duccio in the fourteenth century or the series of suicides painted by Rebeyrolle in the 1980s move me equally. What difference is there in the end? They affect and move me differently, that is all. Malraux in his Museum without Walls understood this well: the telescoping of cultures is the cornerstone of a new art structure, of a common heritage rich in its diversity and soon accessible to all. In this context the quarrel between the ‘abstracts’ and the ‘representationalists’ is in vain.

Nicolas Foster creates romantic and sensual oil paintings on canvas, generally about 45 inches high and 40 inches wide. He paints natural forms, but forms which he gently transfigures- the human face, the female body, trees. He uses colors which are vivid but never jarring, colors which work naturally and harmoniously together, complementing one another. His paintings create a sensation of harmony and of balance and peace, and in a sense this is one of the artist’s most important and recurring goals: to achieve that balance so highly valued in French culture and tradition, the harmony of sensuality and intellectualism, which one could say Paris itself embodies as a city. As a person, Nicolas Foster is kind, gentle and down to earth, but when painting he is serious, and one does not find irony or sarcasm in his canvases. His paintings are not disruptive or disturbing to look at; rather they are positive and idealistic, celebrating life and all that is living.

The following video clip includes excerpts from the broadcast documentary produced about Nicolas Foster Bécourt, “Le Corps Envisagé.” The documentary was coordinated around a solo exhibition of his paintings and sculptures, this one in particular having been sponsored by the French Ministry of Finance (the Centre Culturel du Ministère de l’Economie, des Finances et de l’Industrie). In the background one can hear Nicolas Foster Bécourt himself playing improvised jazz on his clarinet.

The following are excerpts from his book, “L’oeil, la Main et la Voix du Peintre” (“The Eye, the Hand and the Voice of the Painter”), in which he describes his development as an artist and his perspectives on art with characteristic intelligence and sensitivity.

On his formative years:

Drawn to painting at an early age – it was the chief delight of my boisterous fun-loving childhood – I had through it my first experience of creation, of unlimited freedom. The Soutine exhibition which I saw in Paris when I was 13 convinced me. From that time on, I wanted to be a painter. I stopped going to the clay modeling workroom I had been attending on Saturday afternoons for three years and went to oil-painting classes in various studios.

At the age of 14, I enrolled as well in a sketching class at Montparnasse with nude models, where I was able to sketch from life on Sunday mornings. The challenge of a live model, the brevity of the poses, the rapid notations, the wide range of techniques employed, the battle to capture the image of the model, the thrill of a successful “catch” – this training, that of my hand, which became my eye was decisive and beneficial. It lasted four years. I was in the grip of the creative urge. An avid reader of the poets – Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Aragon, Supervielle, Neruda, Artaud, Appollinaire, Eluard, Char – I began to write poems myself. The poets became my constant companions – there was always a volume of poetry in my pocket. They helped me to collect my thoughts, to find my bearings. I had been taking clarinet lessons at the municipal conservatorium since the age of eight. I now dropped Mozart and Weber to develop improvisation, which I discovered with jazz. At two summer courses I had the good luck to meet Louis Sclavis, Didier Levallet, Martial Solal… then, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Steve Lacy, with whom we worked on group improvisation. I was still painting and was in addition introduced to wood sculpture at another summer course given by a master of bas-relief specializing in Romanesque art.

At the Académie Baudry I met people who played a decisive role in my life. There was Roger Baudry himself, and his wife, both painters, and Leidner, thanks to whom I met two other painters, one three years older them myself who became a friend, the other a man of fifty [Louis Fachat] who exhibited at Baudry’s Gallery 222. I discovered his painting at a group show – it was a revelation. I was moved by it immediately. I was convinced that he had his place in the Panthéon if not of the “great painters”, at least of the true painters. As luck would have it – and I don’t believe in luck – he was looking for an art student with whom to share his studio on Rue du Montparnasse. At the time I had only an attic room of 6 square meters for music, writing and painting, so I leapt at the opportunity. I met him at his studio and it was agreed that I could paint there several afternoons a week. My painting at the time – I must have been 19 – bore no resemblance to his, which was abstract, with very beautifully worked surfaces and sumptuous colors despite the impression they gave of patina and rust. As for myself, I was under the spell of Rembrandt and was painting figures seated at a table in a closed universe in which the shadows battled with the light, a kind of chiaroscuro.

After graduating from Académie Baudry, Nicolas Foster Bécourt was admitted to the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts; based upon his talent and drive, Nicolas Foster Bécourt obtained the 14 credits required for the diploma in two years – something which takes most students three years or longer to do.

During these two years at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts I did two summer courses in engraving – a month each year. I became interested in drawing again and discovered the real black – the intense black opposed to a virginal and luminous white. My interest in washes I acquired from Rembrandt. They came to him no doubt as a revelation when he saw some Chinese ink washes, he who collected everything. I discovered them with wonder, as also the last watercolors of Turner and Nolde. I was fascinated and convinced by washes from the start. Rembrandt’s work made a tremendous impact on my conception of painting – this colossal genius painted, drew, engraved, with equal felicity. This iceberg could not be ignored; the only thing to do was to penetrate it, to go through it. His hold annihilated me at the same time as it stimulated me. How could I have the audacity to paint in the presence of such a giant? How could I not be aware of what set him apart from me? The chiaroscuro and shadow of Rembrandt haunted me. I hardly ever painted during these two interludes; I thought solely in black and white. On the contrary, I started doing wash drawings using India ink, goose quills and brushes, and rediscovered the strong and contrasty sensations of engraving. I had entered my “mystic period”, as it was called by those who saw my work at two personal exhibitions, one in 1982, the other in 1983, at the Centre International de Séjour de Paris. The 1983 show comprised 50 paintings, some 40 wash drawings and about 15 engravings – the presentation was worthy of a small museum! I was very proud of it, the great moment of my debut on the Parisian art scene, and I had the good idea of filming it in super 8. I did not know at the time what the future held for me, and with nearly 20 years gone by, I smile and try vainly to believe in the past which has fallen silent, in the wild enthusiasm, in that generous naivety, which gathers up all the uncertainties in a bouquet named Hope. Strange to say, this unreasoning hope was akin to faith, an obstinate faith, and I still wonder where it came from. It guided me, indeed drove me, along the deserted and dusty roads leading to the monasteries or mere chapels lost in the Greek countryside. A call, a quest! My vision remained a mirage, unattainable, beyond reach, but it glistened in the distance, a long way away, an “inaccessible star”. In Athens of course I went to the Byzantine Museum. Some of the icons struck me as absolute masterpieces, all the more so in that they seemed to me to be astonishingly modern, like the music of Gesualdo, de Lassus or Tallis, which I reverently listened to at the time. It may have been in the presence of these icons and the many frescoes I discovered at Mystras and elsewhere that I came to really understand painting, its capacity to abstract as well as to represent, to transcend all that and engender a universal emotion towards which I was drawn.

What may be said of the work of Nicolas Foster Bécourt, his style, his guiding principles as an artist?

Painters, any creators, are in spite of themselves the witnesses of their environment, of the world in which they live. None can escape this. Belonging to one’s time is an obvious fact for one and all. As a painter, I must bear witness differently, bring something else that the eye alone cannot capture, cannot see, paint the invisible, as Klee or Bram Van Velde put it; broaden our world view, open eyes and hearts. Such is my “mission”, my duty.

Contemporary painting must reconquer its audience. Art is an adventure, invented by humanity for humanity. Are the highest aspirations a thing of the past? Has humanity ceased to believe and to hope? Is there no longer anything but money and bombs, profits and war? Is it forbidden to believe in anything else – beauty, shared emotion?

Abstract art, which constituted a revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, while it opened up a new direction, became with time a form of academism. Abstract art, in the forefront of the international artistic scene in the 1950s, had totally eclipsed the painting of those who did not adopt it. Abstract art, with all the inventions and freedoms it brought, could not be ignored, it symbolized modernity, the only possible modernity, thus precluding, or relegating to the background, any other approach to painting.

Nicolas de Staël, who was an actor in this revolution and rushed eagerly and passionately into abstract painting, had the independence of mind, one might almost say the courage, to go back to representation, to include it again in his painting, to struggle to find painterly solutions by means of which he could reintroduce the subject into the picture without there being any retrogression, any disavowal, on his part. For in painting the subject had become taboo. To me abstraction was not a dogma, but simply another means of expression; it had to correspond to an inner need. This distinction, between abstract and representational art, a distinction which was critical for some of my “representational” painter friends, exasperated me. Opposing abstract art and representational art gets us nowhere; it is not the issue. The only thing that counts is recognizing the value of a work, whatever it is. That is what is difficult. Some say, “An abstract picture is decorative”. Is this true of Rothko? No more than of Klee or Tal Coat. Besides, this assertion is meaningless: all pictures have always had a decorative function, have been supposed to serve some purpose which has nothing to do with the “content” of the picture. The issue is elsewhere, in the definition of taste, in that of the Beautiful. What is Taste? What is the Beautiful? It is for the philosophers to supply answers. The painter can only supply answers of a visual nature. He is plunged in the turmoil of the act of creation.

Improvised music such as jazz has roots. The freedom of the musicians is not gratuitous, and still less innate. It is based on an indispensable knowledge of music and the technical mastery of the instrument played. This competence is not so obvious in the pictorial field, for it is not immediately apparent and is more difficult to discern. The action painting of a Pollock, a Kline, a De Kooning still seems facile and gratuitous, unpremediated and without any basis to many people. How, under the circumstances, can a mediocre abstract picture be differentiated from one of value? It is no doubt this simple question which has led to the decline of abstract art and has driven it out of the field of painting (hence installations), not to mention the many followers who have disfigured or exploited it!

My tastes in painting, as in music or poetry, have always been very eclectic. The Maestà painted by Duccio in the fourteenth century or the series of suicides painted by Rebeyrolle in the 1980s move me equally. What difference is there in the end? They affect and move me differently, that is all. Malraux in his Museum without Walls understood this well: the telescoping of cultures is the cornerstone of a new art structure, of a common heritage rich in its diversity and soon accessible to all. In this context the quarrel between the “abstracts” and the “representationalists” is in vain.

Besides, the viewer of a work cannot be bothered with these differences in the nature of the work, these choices, which are first and foremost the painter’s. The quarrel which opposed Gauguin and Van Gogh arose from their convictions; it can inform the view we have of the works of both of them if we go into it. Ought we to choose one or the other, one at the expense of the other? Of course not!

In surveying the work of Nicolas Foster Bécourt one notices several recurring pictorial themes, one of which is trees:

Through Art we try to be immortal! Art… is that bridge thrown between two worlds; it links our visible world to an invisible, unknown, infinite world. Art is a metaphor of life. In 1984 this metaphor of life took on for me the shape of a tree, the substance of trees, their bark. This new period which began was also a new style. The actual paint, its consistency, its weight, its density, became essential elements in the picture; it embodied the very essence of the tree, it was symptomatic. Color thus had a weight, a physical reality, instantaneously identified by the eye.  I became aware of being rooted in the world despite this irrepressible desire to rise above it, to defy the force of gravity. I now see very clearly that trees were for me the symbol of the transition, belonging to this world at the same time as aspiring to Heaven, to the inexpressible. What I painted was more than a tree, it was desire – a desire as physical as it was spiritual. This obsession with trees lasted a year, during which I painted nothing else. Their haunting presence obscured every trace of human life and therefore of figures. Trees were essential to me. They had a life of their own, they radiated a vital energy which I perhaps wished to appropriate. They also gave a feeling of protection, inspired by their strength and stature, the father image no doubt. The harshness of the land on which the olive trees grew, their century-old knotted trunks resembling an elephant’s hide, and this “tide” of olive trees seen from Delphi running down all the way to the shore – all these images had left an indelible impression on my mind and were echoed and re-echoed in my painting at the time. Painting trees had freed me from that face to face with the figures and the characters I painted before. Another space, the one out of doors, opened up to me. Not a landscape, no, just a tree, a living form with which I could converse without any sort of psychology, just its enveloping friendly presence, dumb companion in my defeats, my hurts and my joys. It was a bit like sitting down alongside a wise old man. He knew, he could listen, comfort and encourage. It was all this that I painted when I painted a tree.

Another theme in the work of Nicolas Foster Bécourt is the female body:

The female body… I was completely absorbed by it, it did not leave my mind for a minute… I was besieged with a thousand questions, a thousand answers, of which each work was the result and bore the traces. How can one paint a nude nowadays? How can one approach it, make it tactile, perceptible? This close combat with painting came to symbolize a lovers’ embrace. No longer painting a body from a distance, but, on the contrary, going over it, touching it, encircling it, trying to suggest and to sensualize by pictorial means alone.  In short, not painting the sea or the boat, but the crossing, and restoring an unidentifiable dimension of the world which our own perception makes tangible. Launching out into the nude was for me a way of recapturing painting as a whole, of rediscovering it through a subject, a Being. This capture of the body was also a challenge in a way. Desire soon took a prominent place in my painting and became the real subject. Nudity underlay this approach, this natural aspiration to the pleasure of the senses to which it invites. The carnal aspect of the body could not be free of all sexual connotations, which raised the issue of voyeurism. What is the answer, if not to make the spectator receptive and therefore active? To do this I had to abolish the distance separating the spectator from the body represented and rid my painting of any narrative or merely descriptive element. I wanted to be able to sum up the body, to bring it all into a single whole or entity. The body is both a closed and an open world: it picks up and it emits. It is also a network of energies, an uninterrupted flow, the place of transit where we reside, by means of which we live. The body is our home in this world. What interested me more, nevertheless, was its exterior – its weight, its skin, its pores, the means by which it breathes, vibrates and is made perceptible to us. Almost all the nudes I painted were recumbent. Their horizontality evoked repose and abandon, intimacy and proximity. The subject occupied the whole of the canvas space and stood out against a background of a single color, completely isolating it. Nothing was to distract the eye from this central body placed like a sculpture on a pedestal. No detail came to disturb this nudity revealed – nothing, nothing else, just it alone.

A need for fluidity supplanted the need for heavily impasted paint; it reflected my fleeting view of faces and bodies. In order to convey the perpetual transience of the moment, to paint the liquid Being, I felt the want of more transparency. For the first time I made use of trickling effects, indeed inevitable, since I literally doused my canvas, which resembled a rock face running with water. The wall and the ceiling were spattered with long streaks of paint dripping on to the floor. The heady vapor of linseed oil mixed with turpentine permeated the studio. I, too, was steeped in it from head to foot and drenched by my rapid, broad and violent brushstrokes. I swept the canvas with a brush gorged with almost liquid paint, splashing it until it was practically soaked. This rendering of the female body obviously had a physical and erotic dimension and was an attempt to experience and convey the act of love, the lovers’ embrace. Eroticism in painting has been treated in an external way. Painting the merging of bodies from the inside does not involve mere description, but perception, the painter being placed at the heart of the painting rather than facing it. This attitude required me to be the painting, to melt into it and live the act of painting as an act of love.

In the late 1990’s Nicolas Foster Bécourt’s canvases reflected his intense interest in the human face:

What is a Face? A face sums up the nature of the human species; it symbolizes humanity. It is an interface, the emblematic place through which everything passes, through which everything possible is envisaged.  A face is a filter – a reduction, a reflected image of our physical and mental reality, its outward appearance, a support and a surface at one and the same time, outside and inside. A face enables us to see and be seen, identifies us and relates us to the world. In this world around us images abound. One image succeeds another so quickly that looking is meaningless. Visibility is a question of Time – it must allow of reflection to remain intact and valid, otherwise it is lost and eludes us. This is one of the reasons which drive me to paint, to preserve this time necessary for looking, for apprehending things, for painting not an image but a truth. Painting has this tremendous faculty of internalizing, transfiguring the real. Photography or cinema produce only images; painting can give them a skin, flesh, in fact, a body. It is that body I want to find when painting a face, the body of painting itself.
Painting a face amounts to painting a figure.

Paradoxically, I try while representing it to consider it in the abstract, to go beyond the resemblance which is the distinctive feature of the portrait and concentrate on its universal character, its invariable architecture by means of which it is immediately identifiable in our minds. A face is first of all a presence. It is evidence of a hidden life which escapes us and remains an enigma. Throughout this quest I have ever in mind the icon figures, the face of Christ or that of the Buddha, the African masks, Picasso’s cubist heads, Giacometti’s portraits, Bacon’s self-portraits, as well as those of Rembrandt, Goya’s faces and many others, the faces which I simply see passing in the street every day and which are the epitome of timelessness, of humanity in its spiritual dimension. It is this “perpetual” aspect of humanity that I try to convey by questioning the human face, reaching back to the very roots of Being in order to get as close as possible to life, to touch its mystery and find a meaning for it.

Nicolas Foster Bécourt’s oil paintings have a unique texture and rigidity that are a result of a canvas sizing process he developed in the late 1990’s. Sizing is the application of a substance – such as a glue or acrylic polymer – to a canvas support in order to reduce its absorbency and to keep the paint from coming into direct contact with the fibers that make up the canvas support (the oil in oil paint will cause unprotected natural fibers to rot and become brittle):

By the beginning of 1995 I had given up painting on canvases on stretchers, preferring a cruder support. I prepared the canvas on the floor and sized with glue-size. Sizing in this way allowed me to produce creases in the canvas due to the contracting of the canvas as it dried. Once coated with a mixture of whiting, titanium dioxide and glue diluted in water, it looked like a rather rumpled floor cloth, whitened but still uneven in places. When it was dry, I fixed it to the wall with tacks at its four corners. It was hard to the touch, resisting my onslaughts, quite unlike a flexible stretched canvas with a smooth surface. My cutting of the canvas was deliberately approximate, while following the format chosen. The edges were no longer even; they jutted out here and there. Thus the canvas was rather less severe and formal, less impressive. [Editor’s note: when viewing the work of Nicolas Foster Bécourt in the online gallery you will notice this, the asymmetrical shape of his canvases.]

Nicolas Foster Bécourt also produces beautiful washes.

On washes, he says that:

Swiftness of execution is crucial and correction is impossible. The gesture is then endowed with a fantastic power and the effects produced are inimitable and unique. The many washes I did taught me a great deal in this respect.
They brought me sureness of hand, speed and precision, corresponding to my creative “appetite”, my impetuous and passionate nature. Even now I still do washes, although by dint of practice I have varied them somewhat and made them more pictorial.

Nicolas Foster Bécourt, on painting…

In the first place, a painting is made up of physical elements – pigments, oil, a canvas or a wood or paper support… It is an object which the painter endows with life. A painting is living material: the painter mixes, handles and feeds it, assembling colors in a network of energies, of currents, which match, harmonize, start moving and give rise to the interactions required for its emergence, its elemental physical existence. We fill the painting with our memory, with the time that goes by as it takes shape, and the chance occurrences from which it is built up – a distant echo of our coming into the world and, still more distant, that of its creation.

Nicolas Foster’s CV

Né à Paris en 1960
1978 Académie de Robert BAUDRY
1979 Travaille dans l’atelier de Louis FACHAT
1980-82 École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris
1981-82 Co-créateur de la revue de dessin et de poésie Campanile
1983-87 Co-créateur du groupe Point 4 avec P. Goemaere, V. Teneze, L. Zunino
Vit à Paris

EXPOSITIONS COLLECTIVES
1980 Salon de Vanves (prix)
1981 Salon Jeune Peinture Jeune Expression, Paris
1981 Salon de Niort
1981, 82, 84 Salon d’Art Sacré, Paris
1982 Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper
1982 (Amnesty International) “Atelier 63” au FIAP, Paris
1983 Salon Jeune Peinture, Paris
1983 Théâtre du Ranelagh (Point 4), Paris
1983 Galerie Sensitive (avec Zonino), Paris
1983, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89 Salon Sud 92
1984 Salon d’Ile de France
1984 Galerie Le Point Nommé (Point 4), Paris
1984 Théâtre du Ranelagh (Point 4), Paris
1984, 85, 86, 87 Cloître des Billettes (Point 4), Paris
1985 Théâtre 13 (Point 4), Paris
1986 Cercle Charles Péguy (Point 4), Lyon
1986 OCDE (Point 4), Paris
1987, 91, 93 Salon de Bagneux
1988 Salon d’Art Sacré et Matière, Paris
1989, 90, 91 Cloître des Billettes, Paris
1989-1996 Galerie K’ART, Paris
1989, 90, 91, 92 Salon Réalités Nouvelles, Paris
1989 Acquisition par le Cabinet des Estampes
1990 Galerie Duras, Foire de Tokyo
1990 Foire de Stockholm (K’ART)
1990 Horizon Jeunesse, Grand Palais (parrainé par Artistes et Techniques), Paris
1990 Galerie La Cimaise, Montpellier (avec Louis Fachat)
1990 Foire de Rouen (Galerie K’ART)
1990 Foire de Toulouse (Galerie K’ART)
1990-1997 Galerie J. Debaigts (en permanence), Paris
1991 Galerie Duras (avec Lepoitevin), Paris
1991 Galerie J, Debaigts (groupe), Paris
1991 Sélection Prix de Peinture Crédit Agricole, Paris
1991 Présentation chez Catherine Neyrolles, Paris
1991 La Passerelle des Arts (Avant-Première), Auch
1991 Salon Itinéraires, Levallois
1992 La Passerelle des Arts, Auch
1992 Galerie Art-Objet, Aurillac
1992 Hôtel du Département, Aurillac
1992 Galerie KART (avec Escobar, Rich), Paris
1993 De Bonnard à Bazelitz, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
1993 Découvertes et Créateurs, Delta 7 (Drouot-Montaigne), Paris
1993, 94, 95 Palais Salon, Palais de Justice, Paris
1994 Les Créateurs font un carton, Musée de la Poste, Paris
1994 Salon d’Art Contemporain (La NEF), Le Mée sur Seine
1994 Sélection Prix Fénéon, Chapelle de la Sorbonne, Paris
1994 Vente aux enchères, Boulogne Billancourt
1994 Salon Victor Choquet, Paris
1995 “Portraits – Autoportraits”, atelier de Zelba (avec Franck Franjou et Zelba), Paris
1995 3ème Festival de la Mouffe, Paris
1995 Salon Victor Choquet, Paris
1995 Agefiph (groupe), Bagneux
1995 Vente aux enchères, Boulogne Billancourt, Strasbourg, Blois
1995 Galerie “Samedi” (groupe), Montfort Lamaury
1996 Galerie le Tondo (groupe), Strasbourg
1996 Galerie Brune (groupe), Colmar
1996 Galerie J. Debaigts (groupe), Paris
1996 Centre Culturel Pablo Picasso (groupe), Montigny
1996 Centre Culturel de Herblay, Paysages (groupe)
1997 lauréat du concours d’affiches de l’atelier du Thabor, Rennes
1997 Galerie “Les Singuliers”, (Cabinet de Curiosités, Lavis érotiques)
2001 Salon “l’Art et la Matière”, Centre Culturel, Saint-Pierre lès Nemours
2001 12 ème Mai des Créateurs, Centre Culturel Aragon – Triolet, Orly
2001 Salon de la Celle-Saint-Cloud
2001 Foire internationale de Gand (Lineart), galerie La capitale
2002 Restaurant Sterne, Paris- Sculptures et peintures (avec Xavier Robin)
2002 Galerie Art Stone, Gand
2002 Foire internationale de Gand (Lineart), galerie La capitale
2003 SNPPSY, Paris (Groupe), Le portrait, le vêtu et le nu
2003 Salon Rainbow Attitude, galerie Huis-Clos, Paris
2004 Symposium international de sculpture sur marbre, St. Pons
2005 Salon Art du Nu, espace champeret, Paris
2005 Biennale internationale de Sculpture Contemporaine en Bourgogne, NoLay
2006 Galerie Plume, autoportraits, Paris
2007 Biennale Internationale de Sculpture Contemporaine en Bourgogne, NoLay
2007 Galerie Les Vergers de L’Art, Tendance Papier, Paris

EXPOSITIONS INDIVIDUELLES
1982, 83 CISP, Paris
1988 La Galerie, Paris
1989 Galerie J. Debaigts, Paris
1989 Galerie K’ART, Paris (Show room Artifort Trau)
1990 Galerie K’ART, Ensafer, Paris
1991 Galerie J. Debaigts, Paris
1992 Galerie K’ART, Paris
1992 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
1993 Galerie Mailletz, Paris
1993 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
1994 C.E. Banque Paribas, Paris
1994 Galerie Mailletz, Paris
1994 Galerie Point Rouge, Paris
1994 Exposition chez François Damez, Paris
1994 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
1995 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
1996 Exposition chez François Damez, Paris
1996 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
1997 Galerie J.Debaigts, Paris
1997 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
1998 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
1999 Galerie Crous-Beaux-Arts, Paris
1999 “Art Contemporain 99” espace Auteuil, Paris
1999 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
2000 Pictural Café, Paris
2000 Bihan Café, Paris
2000 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
2001 Salon privé du Louvre, (Lavis)
2001 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
2002 Mairie du 19ème, Paris
2002 Sculptures et peintures chez Sterne (avec Xavier Robin), Paris
2002 Mairie du XIXème, Paris
2002 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
2004 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
2004 Centre Culturel du MINEFI (Ministère de l’Economie, des Finances et de l’Industrie), 100 oeuvres, Paris
2005 Espace 7 Parnassiens, Paris
2006 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
2007 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
2007 Chateau de Melin, Bourgogne
2007 Imaginarium, 10 sculptures, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Bourgogne
2007 Galerie Les Vergers de L’Art, “Les Érotiques”, Paris
2008 Porte Ouverte au “204”, Paris
2009 15ème Porte Ouverte au “204”
2010 16ème Porte Ouverte au “204”
2011 17ème Porte Ouverte au “204”

ARTICLES
1983 Revue “Centre ville”, texte écrit par O. George
1983 Revue “B.A.T”, rubrique expo
1988 Revue “Connaissance des Arts” (No. 439), rubrique expo (sept.)
1989 Revue “Connaissance des Arts” (No. 453), rubrique expo (nov.)
1989 Revue “l’oeil”, texte écrit par Pierre Brisset
1990 Journal “La dépêche du Midi”, texte écrit par B.P.
1990 Revue “Artension”, rubrique expo.
1990 Revue “Canalmanch”, rubrique expo
1990 Galerie K’ART, plaquette de présentation à l’occasion de Stockholm Art Fair
1991 Journal “La Dépêche du Midi”, exposition de groupe chez Catherine Neyrolles à Riguepeu (28 juillet et 1 août)
1991 Revue “Canalmanach”, rubrique expo (déc.- jan.)
1992 Journal “Sud Ouest”, expo à la CCI : sept artistes dans l’arène
1992 Journal “La Montagne”, Escobar-Foster-Rich : un trio divin
1992 Revue “Artistes et techniques”, texte écrit par Françoise Coffrant
1998 Revue “Artistes”, L’élan du corps par Françoise Coffrant
2000 “Les saisons de la dance”, texte écrit par Philippe Verrièle
2001 Revue “Artistes”, texte écrit par Sandrine Panossian
2002 Catalogue de la Foire Internationale de Gand LINÉART
2004 Revue “Artistes” (No. 112), “Peindre à L’huile diluable à l’eau avec Nicolas Foster” (nov.- déc.)
2004 Revue “Artension” (No. 20), rubrique expo (nov.- déc.)
2004 Dictionnaire d’Art Contemporain, K.G. Saur Verlag GmbH (Thomson Corporation, Leipzig), rédigé par Caren Fuhrmann (déc.)
2007 Revue “Artistes” (No. 125), “Tendre et appreter sa toile avec Nicolas Foster” (jan.- fév.)
2007 Revue “Artension”, rubrique expo (juillet- août)
2007 Journal Le Bien Public, “Nicolas Foster ou Le jeu des corps” (14 juillet)
2007 Revue “Artistes” (No. 130) rubrique expo (oct.- nov.)

BIBLIOGRAPHIE
1994 “La Chorégraphie des sens ou le corps du désir” texte écrit par Nicolas Foster
1998 “L’oeil, la main et la voix du peintre”, texte et peintures de Nicolas Foster

FILMOGRAPHIE
1984 Journal de la nuit TF1 (Présentation du groupe “POINT 4”)
1985 Emission “Performances” TF1 (Portrait)
2007 “Le Corps Envisagé”, DVD de 58 minutes, portrait de Nicolas Foster (peinture, sculpture, musique), édition NFB