At just thirty years old, Pierre Ygouf, better known under the pseudonym “Piotre", is part of this new generation of graffiti artists whose side continues to climb.
Born in Caen in…, this young visual artist has always been precocious. If many artists swear to have always been passionate about art, in the case of Piotre, the formula seems adapted. Indeed, in kindergarten already, the Caennais affirms that when he grows up, he will be a painter or draftsman and he asks for books on Picasso. A little later, he joined the high school of applied arts, La Ruche and graduated from Strate College, an art and design school in Paris. This jack-of-all-trades accumulates influences and does not hesitate to mix styles. He thus succeeds in the tour de force of perfectly combining pop-art and street-art.
Piotre's work is largely influenced and more or less explicitly by the masters of the late twentieth century: Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat or Keith Haring to name a few.
An adjective that frequently emerges when speaking of French remains “hyperactive". Piotre needs to take on new challenges, to challenge the media and the techniques used. He thus easily passes from the canvas in the workshop to the fresco in the street. Piotre has also collaborated with big brands in search of a younger and fun image like the watchmaker Louis Pion. The graffiti artist is also called upon by cities to carry out large-scale projects (Lyon, Lisbon, Marrakech, Miami…).
The recipe for this dazzling success can be summed up in its unique style, recognizable at first glance.
Piotre makes it a point of honor to rehabilitate the work of personalities that he considers to be under-rated; he then integrates them into his over-vitaminized paintings. The graffiti artist favors a palette of primary colors that he then mixes with black and white to create stronger contrasts.
Finally, we cannot deny the importance of the world of American advertising of the fifties, as well as comics on the work of Piotre.
