Hubert Reeves
Jean-François Gromaire and I share a taste for nature and imposing landscapes.
Like him I like great plains and drifting clouds roaming in infinites skies.
His paintings are suffused with calm and solitude, and a subtle anguish pervades in the silent vastness of great spaces.
Priscilla Telmon
Every one of your work is like a heart's prayer caressing the eyes.
What kind of terrestial experience opened your eyes, so that you could
see unity within multiplicity, emptiness
within fullness, and find life in death of the modern world?
The parallel worlds, the infinite skies, the opening doors leading to somewhere else
The light flows out into the night. The vibrating contours delivers almost animated scenes
Your painting tells a tale of splendid eternity. It's breathtaking.
Stéphane Audeguy
It is somewhow impossible to introduce anybody to Jean-François Gromaire's work. It speaks for itself. It does not require esoteric knowledge from you; neither does it exclude you. Above all, each of Jean-François' paintings recreates a singular, poetical, powerful world. That is why I consider Jean-François Gromaire one of the greatest painters of our time.
The apparent simplicity of his work derives from a subtle savoir faire. He refuses any kind of decorative easiness. The figures and buildings that inhabit his paintings have a very strong, enigmatic and beautiful presence. They may evoke, at first glance, the work of Chirico, the metaphysical dimension of the landscapes; to me they echo even more the work of Giorgio Morandi. These landscapes do not belong to any known country, and yet we know them. They are not a reflection of a lost paradise. They're not either post-apocalyptic. And yet they are infused with art history ( that his grandfather was the famous Marcel Gromaire is certainly not a coincidence).
His work is extremely mundane, but in a very peculiar sense : Jean-François Gromaire is a man of the world. And it is not suprising that he has practiced in his career many cratfworks, from carving wood to piloting helicopters.
More than a thinking form of art, it is an invitation to a peaceful meditation. A specialist may be able to discuss the intricate links of Jean-François Gromaire's work with the Far eastern "traditional arts", or may compare it to the architectonic lyrism of Debré and Soulages. But you don't have to know about it. All you need is to let yourself merge into these beautiful paintings where man is at the right place, that is to say essential though unnecessary, and even, sometimes, absent.
Valérie Tordjman
When you see a painting you have to be able to embrace the landscapes and close your eyes. Open them now, and see what Gromaire can see. This resemblance is an image, it is a painting, you are right here, in the painting. It might be a be a diptych, a triptych, a series, it is always a fiction. And here stands Gromaire, with his winged brushes made of wood and shadow. Caught in the sound of clouds.