Born in 1997 in Orange and raised on the island of La Réunion, Ludivine Gonthier now lives and works in Poitiers. A graduate of the Beaux-Arts in 2022, she explores oil painting on a variety of formats, from intimate small canvases to large-scale works. Through her art, Ludivine Gonthier tells fragments of life—her joys and sorrows, memories and dreams. The artist often stages herself, alone or surrounded by loved ones, in an autofictional approach that blends sincerity with theatricality. Her pictorial universe, inspired by her surroundings, everyday objects, and the people around her, captures intimate moments that she transforms into universal experiences. Her work is also part of a broader movement of female emancipation, exploring the aesthetics of neo-burlesque with a baroque and flamboyant style.
Through her paintings, she reinvents the mundane, turning personal narratives into spaces of resistance and freedom. With a bold and colorful approach, Ludivine Gonthier celebrates a youth in search of liberation from judgment and oppression, offering works infused with love, humor, and vitality.
Text by Martin Kiefer for the exhibition Vénus Noire :
It’s a moment among women, in a studio with the feel of a winter garden, though they are dressed more for summer—nude or half-nude, standing, sitting, reclining: yes, they are posing. Three vibrant, statuesque women, both sensual and defiant toward those who gaze at them. There is something in the air reminiscent of the bordel on Carrer d’Avinyó, so dear to Picasso, as if these women, without knowing it, were recreating a living tableau. "Joséphine, Colette, and Frida," suggests Ludivine Gonthier—not with realism or true resemblance, but rather as three friends, surrounded by a flourishing fauna that sprawls like a jungle: a parrot perched on a branch, a fiery three-headed boa, tattoos on skin, and small paintings within the painting that recall Joséphine Baker’s famous mascots—Albert the pig and Chiquita the cheetah. For the scene unfolds between them and her, between the memory of Joséphine Baker—evoked in countless details—and these three women of today, who may, in fact, be one and the same. Ludivine Gonthier, influenced by the Neue Wilde movement of German painting, works with charcoal and oil paint, often inserting herself into her lush compositions. Here, she presents a monumental triple portrait that takes on an allegorical dimension—an ode to sensuality, even eroticism. Her painting affirms the freedom and pride of being Joséphine, Colette, Frida, Ludivine. The freedom to be oneself.