Some artists paint, others sculpt — and then there are those rare creators who gather fragments of the world and rearrange time itself. Jean-Charles de Ravenel belongs to this rare breed. His medium is collage, but what he constructs is closer to an archaeology of dreams: a universe where centuries merge into a single gaze, where paper breathes anew, and memory is no longer linear, but cyclical, intimate, alive.
Born in Paris in 1950, Jean-Charles de Ravenel’s path into art began not with a brush, but with an eye — an eye sharpened over two decades in the world of antiques, hunting rare objects, forgotten documents, whispered traces of bygone lives. His renowned gallery on Rue Jacob was, for years, a temple dedicated to these treasures. But one day, the collector’s instinct gave way to a deeper calling: not simply to preserve the past, but to transform it.
In his studio, fragments of history spread across a vast table: 18th-century botanical engravings, imperial telegrams, faded photographs, invitations to long-past galas, maps of vanished empires. Ravenel arranges them not as static relics, but as living particles of meaning, moving and turning them until they find their place — “like notes in a secret score,” as he puts it. Each collage becomes a constellation of stories, a delicate balance between erudition and emotion, precision and poetry.
While his works often start from reproductions of iconic Cubist, Suprematist, or Constructivist paintings, Jean-Charles de Ravenel does not simply cite them: he appropriates these images, displaces, fragments, and overlays them with original historical documents — 19th-century telegrams, botanical prints, imperial invitations — constructing a new visual narrative, at once homage and reinvention. His process involves no digital manipulation: it is entirely manual and tactile, made of cuts, collages, physical overlays, and intuitive juxtapositions. Each collage becomes a singular encounter between printed memory and the authentic matter of time, where artistic reproduction dialogues with historical trace, creating images oscillating between citation, memory, and pure creation. These works are not mere images; they are repositories of memory, layered narratives inviting the viewer into a labyrinth of connections.
Though his materials draw from distant eras — Imperial Russia, Palm Beach salons, 19th-century botanical expeditions — his sensibility is unmistakably contemporary. His compositions pulse with the awareness that beauty is not confined to a single moment but woven across time. To stand before one of his works is to glimpse a dance between past and present, a reverie where fragments converse, contradict, and complete one another.
In this new series, Jean-Charles de Ravenel ventures even further, explicitly inspired by the Cubism of Picasso, Braque, and Juan Gris, engaging in an intimate dialogue with the decomposition of form and the fragmentation of vision. His collages echo the visual rhythms of the early 20th-century avant-garde, with angular overlays, abrupt cuts, and compositions oscillating between pictorial flatness and illusory depth. Each work emerges as a contemporary echo of Cubist language, reinvented through the historic materiality of aged papers.
But his gaze goes beyond Paris and Western tradition. One also hears the influences of Suprematism and Russian Constructivism — Alexander Vesnin, Ivan Puni, Rodchenko, Mayakovsky — whose visual experiments with typography, geometry, and space resonate in the graphic energy of these collages. Jean-Charles de Ravenel absorbs this heritage and transforms it: incorporating the purity of Suprematist forms, the Constructivist boldness, and the revolutionary poetry of these movements, crafting compositions where geometric rigor opens to the tenderness of memory and the exuberance of color.
In an image ecosystem dominated by swipes and on-demand obsolescence, Jean-Charles de Ravenel’s collages erupt as palimpsests of counter-flow: telegrams, maps, and 19th-century engravings are inserted into Cubist, Suprematist, and Constructivist iconographies, and through this tactile gesture of cutting and collaging, the visual surface regains tactile density and temporal stratification. By rubbing historical matter against the acceleration of the now, Ravenel implodes the linearity of the present, creating a retro-futurist field where each fragment — both citation and deviation — reminds us that true innovation is always a détournement of memory.
We invite you to step into this fascinating world of fragments and fables. To discover Jean-Charles de Ravenel’s extraordinary alchemy is to rediscover the joy of wonder.
Jean-Charles de Ravenel’s works have captivated collectors and audiences worldwide, from New York to Los Angeles, Palm Beach to London. Now, for the first time, Lisbon becomes the stage for this extraordinary vision. COLLAGES presents his latest series — created in Estoril, where a unique dialogue between Suprematism and Atlantic tropicality shines — alongside earlier works evoking scientific gardens, imperial intrigues, and impossible journeys.
Each collage is an invitation: look closer, they whisper. Follow the threads. Trace the echoes. Imagine the stories beneath the surface. For in Jean-Charles de Ravenel’s hands, art is not merely an image — it is a conversation across centuries, a meditation on beauty, a reminder that the past is not behind us, but within us, waiting to be rediscovered.
Opening: 21 May, 6pm
Rui Freire – Fine Art
Rua Serpa Pinto 1
Chiado, Lisbon
