• THE ARTIST
  • Godon, in a few words…

Godon, in a few words…

We will always be amazed at those chil­dren who were able to over­come huge obsta­cles and rebuild them­selves to live a man’s life, wrote Cyrul­nik. Out of this recon­struc­tion can emerge an artist with a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the world of nor­mal emo­tions, on every­day life, on the being plunged into urban­ity. This recon­struc­tion took time for young Godon. It was com­pleted through an encounter. An encounter with a woman, a woman he has now mar­ried, the way you marry obvi­ous­ness. The obvi­ous­ness of finally accept­ing him­self. For the murky paths he had taken made a spir­i­tual awak­en­ing more desir­able and the need for an ideal more stub­born: to paint, to live paint­ing, to live from his paint­ing. That was in 1993, he was 29 years old. And we’re off.

While he was already rec­og­nized as a vision­ary that year, it would take him two more years of relent­less work to forge, brush stroke by brush stroke, a style and tech­nique that would result in his first big show in Le Tou­quet in 1996. Relent­less when it comes to work, he is also a per­fec­tion­ist with regards to for­mal­ism. Thus, to this day and begin­ning in 1996, dozens of exhi­bi­tions in pres­ti­gious gal­leries in Lille, Paris, Ams­ter­dam, Den­ver and New York have been devoted to him. Muse­ums opened their doors to him as well, and books on his work fol­lowed, one after the other…

The first exhibit in 1994 at the Palais de l’Europe in Le Tou­quet, a resort town in the north of France, was attended by the vaca­tion­ing Parisian bour­geoisie. He rented out the space for one day, and showed 26 works. Not one of them went back home to the work­shop. And a stroke of luck: at that same exhi­bi­tion he made an emo­tional impact on a renowned art dealer. That dealer opened the door for him. He rushed right in, he was trust­ing and this trust was mutual; a great foothold on which to estab­lish him­self in this recon­struc­tion.

But what on earth were Godon’s brushes doing to draw such a des­tiny for him? They cast a good coat of humor, with­out doubt, but the brushes’ hair seems to have been united by his ten­der­ness and his talent.

© Pho­tos by Georges-​Felix Cohen