Yann Leto

Yann Leto (b. 1979, France) lives and works as a painter in Spain. Between 2015 and 2016, Leto worked in Rome under a Scholarship of the Royal Spanish Academy. Following his first solo show in Los Angeles in 2019, Leto gained international recognition and has been widely exhibited throughout Europe since, and is an active participant in various art fairs. 

 

At the beginning of his career, Leto was influenced by diverse sources, from American and French comics and the underground culture of the ‘90s to German Expressionism of the post-war period. Leto represents figures in dynamic interior and exterior settings, from intimate forest escapades to dinner parties teeming with social contradictions. Leto leans into irony to dissect equivocal topics and to explore sociopolitical critique, bolstered by his distinctive and unconstrained technique and style. 

 

A lover of classical painting, Leto draws inspiration from great masterpieces from art history, borrowing prominent motifs and iconography which he incorporates into scenes devised via his own experiences. Leto’s fusion of Cubist elements and fluid and vibrant Fauvist forms combined with his punk attitude and aesthetic, create intriguing narrative works akin to surreal collages. 

 

Collaging styles and influences to layer ironic narratives resonates with the artist’s broader interest in a contemporary world hyper-saturated with content and information. The radio plays a crucial role in Leto’s creative process, delivering a stream of data from sports highlights to breaking news. Since everything is as Leto describes, already “an online caricature,” he examines and utilises images from social networks. By compiling digital files on various hard drives with Google images, newspaper clippings and articles, Leto produces uniquely crowded and distorted compositions where visual and emotional narrative circuits re-orient individuals in a turbulent society.