PORTRAIT OF MADEMOISELLE COCO CHANEL

This work is my interpretation of Marie Laurencin’s portrait of Mademoiselle Coco Chanel.
Created during my artistic studies in Monaco, it began as a close dialogue with Laurencin’s
composition and her distinctive vision of femininity.
I deliberately removed the horse present in the original composition and reworked the colour
atmosphere through my own palette. By simplifying the scene, I wanted the woman to become
the emotional centre of the image. The surrounding animals and the deep, dreamlike space
remain as silent companions — part of a world that seems to exist somewhere between reality,
memory and imagination.
Looking at this work now, I recognise an early connection with the theme that continues
throughout my practice: the inner world of women. Even when I was interpreting another artist, I
was already instinctively drawn to a female figure absorbed in her own state — quiet, distant
and psychologically elsewhere.
For me, this painting became more than an exercise in reinterpretation. It was one of the early
moments in which I began to understand which images repeatedly attract me: women, silence,
animals and an interior space that cannot be seen directly, but can be felt.