Philippe Cognée

Philippe Cognée, born in 1957 in Nantes, France, is a painter, engraver, and draughtsman. He spent his childhood in Benin, where his father worked as a teacher under the cooperation agreement between France and Benin. He returned to France in 1974 to complete his studies and graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts in Nantes in 1982. ​ Since 1982, Cognée has been exhibiting his work both nationally and internationally. He is renowned for his unique encaustic painting technique, which involves using heated and crushed wax to produce a blurred effect. This approach raises questions about the thinning away of the image and the human condition in relation to urban environments. His subjects often include everyday objects, urban landscapes, supermarkets, and other banal scenes, transformed into evocative images through his distinctive process. ​ Cognée's works are held in prestigious collections such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has also been a recipient of the Villa Medici fellowship in Rome and was nominated for the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2004.