Anastasia Bay French, b. 1988

Anastasia Bay (1988) lives and works in Brussels. She studied fine art in Paris under François Boisrond. Using bold shapes and line she explores figurative painting, deploying themes from the classical canon; nudes and still lifes. She's co-foundator of the Brussels exhibitions platform: Clovis XV.
French artist Anastasia Bay's paintings have always had a caricatural touch, both in terms of subject matter and execution. But since her move to Brussels in 2013, this only seems to have increased. Figures such as Walter Swennen, for a long time an 'artist's artist', have had a profound influence on a wide range of (younger) artists. And on Bay, also, who does not conceal her admiration for the Brussels-based painter. The same is true of René Daniëls, the most 'Belgian' of all Dutch painters. In her recent paintings, there seems to be a two-fold shift. On the one hand - fortunately - the caricatural dimension is still present. But there is also a kind of purification or stillness. In certain works, her brushwork seems almost like a pencil drawing, a testimony to the sensitivity and lightness evoked by the work of Matisse and - to a lesser extent - Picasso.