Pierre Calogero

Origins and training

Pierre Calogero, born in Paris (6th arrondissement) in 1944, is a contemporary French painter. He loves drawing and began painting as a self-taught artist around the age of twenty, developing a creative and intuitive practice that he still pursues today.

Early years and development

His first works are figurative; he exhibited them as early as 1971. His practice soon evolved towards abstraction, a decisive change that allowed him to move away from reality and create freely.

He trained in the Paris studio of the American painter Henri Goetz, where he learned engraving.

Abstraction as a language

Drawn to the Supports/Surfaces movement in France and to the New York School, he made abstraction a choice that imposed itself on him, to express freely his need to create and to improve his technique, in search of a unique language.

He paints spaces; he explores the notions of territory, void, balance and oblique lines that run through his canvases, in search of tension and vibration between forms and coloured surfaces.

“His painting is a reflection on colours in order to express emotions.”

Artistic process

His regular practice of drawing and photography forms the basis of his compositions, as does close observation of nature and architecture.

For him, every new composition requires an initial vision, a combination of colours that imposes itself and triggers his need to create.

The urge to paint is always with him. He starts each composition without knowing exactly what the finished work will be, because he likes to be guided by inspiration, by the risks that must be taken and by the unpredictable role of chance.

Exhibitions and recognition

In 1976 he held his first exhibition in Cergy-Pontoise, at the Centre culturel Malraux, where the Fonds national d’art contemporain acquired one of his canvases, Lignes de vie.

His other professional career, although very different, never took him away from painting or from the exhibition circuit. He has signed “Calo” since the very beginning of his career and takes part regularly in salons and exhibitions in France and abroad.

In 2006 he gave up his other profession and at last had his own studio in which to devote himself entirely to painting. Since then he has exhibited every year in galleries, salons and international fairs: Brussels, Lausanne, Venice, New York, Beijing.

In 2015 he was part of a touring exhibition of French painting in China and received the Prize of Excellence at the exhibition organised in France on that occasion.

Recently noticed by the magazine République des Arts, he has been invited in 2026 to the “Amitié France-Japon” exhibition. Since 2009 he has shown his canvases on his artist’s website; he is now represented by BAM Gallery and several major online galleries, and has been selected for the coming Salon d’Automne in Paris. His works are in many private collections.