NEW YORK – Phaidon is delighted to announce Nicolas Party, the first comprehensive monograph to examine the artist’s career to date, to be published in February 2022. Swiss-born artist Nicolas Party (b. 1980-) is a figurative painter and sculptor whose color-saturated landscapes, portraits, and still lifes simultaneously celebrate and challenge representational conventions in the history of painting. At 41 years old, Party is one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful artists working today, with exhibitions at the world’s leading institutions and auction records in excess of one million US dollars.
Definitive and insightful, Nicolas Party presents a complete picture of the artist’s career, from his early years in Switzerland as a graffiti artist to his transition to soft pastel in 2013 – his preferred medium to the present. Party is known for his distinctly personal yet accessible and recognizable imagery – bright, graphic patterns applied to canvases, sculptures, furniture, floors, ceilings, doorways, and walls. The resulting effect evokes a universe of fantastical characters and motifs where perspective is heightened and skewed – with uncanny results.
Contributions to Nicolas Party include: an interview with Stephane Aquin, Director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; a survey from the late Stefan Banz (1961-2021), the late artist, curator and writer and the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp; a focus piece on Party’s Purple Peaches by Ali Subotnick, curator, writer, editor and the previous curator at the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles; and writing by Melissa Hyde, associate professor of art history at the University of Florida in Gainesville, on Party’s use of pastel and how he is bringing it back in fashion more than 300 years after the French Revolution.
This richly illustrated survey features more than 200 images including a photograph of the artist’s studio, exhibition installation views, and a never-before published selection of pages from his sketchbooks – an unprecedented inside look at Party’s process.
The cover of Nicolas Party features the iconic painting Portrait with a Seahorse. A limited edition of the book will also be available.
Visit the website for Phaidon and see its dedicated page for Nicolas Party.
