Istraille

It was aged 17 that Istraille began learning about drawing before starting to practise graffiti two years later. Self-taught, he learnt graphic techniques on drawing pads to then spread his art onto walls in cities. By working, he passed the entrance exam for the École Pivaut, a private applied arts college in Nantes, where he graduated in 2007. He then began a career as an artistic director and freelance illustrator in Nantes, then in Saint-Étienne, before setting up in the city of Toulouse in 2015. In parallel, Istraille pursues the development of his personal artistic production.

Although he produces a large majority of his works from acrylics on canvas, the artist plays with techniques, media and supports to respond to his desires and needs, continually experimenting with new creative possibilities. Drawing is at the centre of his approach and it is through this first casting of a pencil that the subject takes form before being materialised on the canvas. “[Seeking] to put up a united front with [his] dancers, steeping them in a story, a dance style, until the improbable is created”, the artist feels and designs his characters depending on their movement and their posture, aiming in the end to achieve perfection in the dynamic depiction of bodies.

Inspired by everything that affects his life and his creative impulse, Istraille’s pictorial work is the reflection of his personal evolution, fed by everybody he meets and all of the artistic forms observed on the way.