Exposition consacrée à Jean-François Millan intitulée « Paysage – Couleur – Émotion »

The Maison de l?Amitié France-Amérique is hosting an exhibition dedicated to Jean-François Millan entitled "Paysage ? Color? Emotion".

The exhibition runs from May 30 to September 5, 2026, with free admission.

Visitors will be able to discover it on Mondays from 1:30pm to 5pm, and from Tuesday to Saturday from 9:30am to 12:30pm and from 1:30pm to 5pm.

Jean-François Millan has lived in Montlevon for over twenty-five years, and for many years was a photo retoucher. Although painting has always played a part in his life, it has taken on greater importance since his retirement. Although his work is regularly exhibited at the Salon d?Automne at Silo U1, he is now presenting a solo show at the Maison de l?Amitié France-Amérique - his first in over twenty years.

"Jean-François Millan?s ethic could be to make people happy through painting, a painter who has always worked in the company of Bach and Coltrane. His link with music is forged through color; it is through color that the artist unleashes a lyrical, contemplative expression in the affirmation of a permanent sense of wonder, a joie de vivre far removed from the tragic inclinations and all-too-frequently off-putting intellectuality of contemporary conceptual approaches.

His credo is light-color, the quest for happiness in the chromatic song that his refined eye orchestrates with rigor and spontaneity. The artist has spoken at length about his way of working. His vocabulary, with its ?well-tempered? geometrisation of forms, has not forgotten the great lesson of Cézanne, for whom every element is reduced to ?cubes, cones and cylinders? But the man Jean-François Millan admires most, having met Georges Braque and attended the Parisian academies from which the great names of the Ecole de Paris would emerge, is Pierre Bonnard. He owes part of his art to Bonnard, his ability to consider each painting as a closed universe endowed with its own particular poetics, and to transfigure nature into a fairyland of delectable hues. However, Jean-François Millan?s singular style of writing, in line, color and irresistible rhythm, bears witness to a highly personal creative vision that is immediately recognizable.

Whether they take place in the Trégor region, where the granite sings, or in the Marne valley, where the villages huddle under the snow, or linger on the steep paths of the Champagne vineyards, or take us under the blazing sun of Provence, his landscape campaigns are declarations of love to the natural world around him. He has always transposed what he sees into a universe dazzled by light and color, masterfully blending the geometric construction of cubism with the colorful intensity of fauvism, all in a softened, soothed form. The resolution of this apparent contradiction contributes to the charm of a work in which the humility displayed by the octogenarian artist marries a rare and astonishing youthfulness.

Driven by a constant preoccupation with synthesis and unity, Jean-François Millan?s art bears witness to an infectious humanity and a - probably unconscious - desire to spiritualize painting. Whether in Tokyo, Chicago or Château-Thierry in the Marne valley, where he lives in the shadow of ?bonhommes? Corot and Jean de la Fontaine, Jean-François Millan has a gift for making people happy through painting. It's an understatement to say how grateful we are, through the breadth of his book of images, which he always presents as modest and unpretentious, to let us savor this sensation of fulfillment in serenity, which is the beauty of his work!

Noël CORET

artsvisuels@ville-chateau-thierry.fr

Location :
Maison de l'Amitié France-Amérique
2 place des États-Unis
02400 Château-Thierry

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