“I came to sculpture through a direct, intuitive, manual approach to the elements: through an interest in the most diverse techniques, the physical and spatial organization of things.”

Daniel Pontoreau, born in 1947, is affiliated to Arte Povera and is a contemporary of the Young English Sculpture.

His physical and sensory contact with the clay instigates Pontoreau’s profound connection to his artworks. He describes his approach to sculpture as “intuitive” The artist prepares his own material, as he extracts it himself from the quarry, allowing him to intimately understand the clay’s properties, and to fully exploit its expressive potential. Once heated, the clay turns into stone. This process fascinates the artist and fuels his reflection on transformation and permanence.

Pontoreau’s artworks are characterized by striking contrasts between the violence of the material and the mastery of the gesture, between primal emotion and intellectual reflection.

His forms, on the other hand, are deliberately simple, sometimes enhanced by delicate engravings or subtle drawings, surfacing as a scarification on the skin of his sculptures. This apparent simplicity reflects a search for authenticity and purity, far from any need for spectacular effect.

”I don’t want to dictate the reading,” he says, ”I invite you to contemplate a waking dream space”. This is how he proposes new ways of apprehending space and interacting with art.

Daniel Pontoreau’s art of sculpture, conceived in and by space, is particularly appreciated in Asia, where he is greatly recognized. His artworks are part of public collections and museums in Japan, China, and South Korea.

He received in 2018 the Medal of Arts from the Academy of Architecture for his numerous interventions in urban spaces and landscapes.