Yves Clerc. [English Ed.]

The writer and art historian Pascal Bonafoux has for years focused his passionate interest in painting on the theme of the self-portrait in Western art. The essays published since 1984 include Les Peintres et l'autoportrait (Skira), Rembrandt, autoportrait (Skira, 1985), Van Gogh par Vincent (Denoël, 1988), Cézanne, portrait (Hazan, 1995) and Moi Je, par soi-même, autoportraits du XXe siècle (Diane de Selliers, 2004).

Catherine Alestchenkoff was born in 1962. Art historian, she collaborated for eight years with the Musée d'Art Moderne of Paris as a researcher for exhibition catalogues (Kees Van Dongen, 1990; Figures du Moderne, 1992) and afterward as exhibition assistant (Derain, 1994). Then, in Paris-Musées, she joined the "Edition d'objets" department, with responsibility for conception and editorial proceedings for derivative product lines. Since its opening in 2000, she has been director of cultural events at the Grimaldi Forum of Monaco, the Principality's cultural and congressional centre, which produces artistic exhibitions of international scope, generally dedicated to a major artistic movement or to a subject of patrimony or civilization, such as "Air-Air" (2000); "SuperWarhol" (2003); "Impérial Saint-Pétersbourg, de Pierre le Grand à Catherine II" (2004); "Arts of Africa" (2005); and "Les Années Grace Kelly, Princesse de Monaco" (2007), to cite just a few. These projects offer the opportunity of collaborating with numerous collectors and institutions throughout the world, and of maintaining privileged relations with the greatest specialists in the field of art.

An admirable lure. It is not without utility, before Yves Clerc's works, to remember the words Octave Mirbeau wrote to his friend Claude Monet: "We are in complete agreement: in painting, it is through the eyes that the thought should be excited."