Dominique Pavard’s retrospective in Cannes spans more than forty years of dedication, passion, and meticulously executed art
They say, “it takes a lifetime to see clearly”. In Dominique Pavard’s art, that truth resonates. Her current exhibition “La peinture du bonheur” at Espace Miramar in Cannes, covering thirty works from 1982 to 2025, unfolds like chapters in a dual allegiance: one to the rugged Andes, the other to the sun-warmed shores of the Mediterranean.
Born in Provence and raised in Cannes, Pavard has remained deeply rooted in her Mediterranean home, while also following a long-standing fascination with distant markets and highland cities. The viewer is taken to Rue Andine and Quito, Plaza San Francisco, early paintings dense with narrow alleys, cathedral stones and market rhythms, to canvases anchored on the Riviera: Cannes Carlton, Le Suquet de Cannes, Menton. These southern scenes carry lived familiarity: rooftops and stones marked by morning light, façades and skies transforming through the day. Pavard maintains both regions in balance, allowing their light and textures to converse.
Her method builds images from thousands of minute colour droplets, each placed with deliberate patience. This is pointillism, the approach pioneered in the 19th century by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. From a distance, an image appears fully formed; close up, the eye discovers a shifting interplay of hue, responsive to angle and light. Each canvas demands attention, rewarding sustained viewing with layered atmospheres. In her latest work, Ciel jaune (2025), she extends pointillism into new directions while preserving the integrity of her method.
Such prolonged devotion to a single, demanding method lends her art its force. Her studies of classical literature and her years as a lecturer in Europe shine through quietly in her compositions: every image deliberate, every street precisely constructed. Even the vibrant chaos of an Andean market is governed by an underlying order of memory and rhythm. Her work has appeared in exhibitions in Quito, Bogotá, San José and Dallas, and she has earned prizes and recognition, although she remains largely outside wider international awareness.
Espace Miramar, constructed in 1929 as the Palais Miramar Hotel and later converted into a cinema, provides an apt setting. Its history as a space of reinvention and public gathering resonates with an artist whose work bridges continents and decades. These retrospective spans more than forty years, each painting shaped by the patience of her technique and the clarity of her vision.
The exhibition allows the viewer to experience colour as presence rather than ornament, and to follow an artist faithful to her own course while moving between two worlds. La peinture du bonheur presents an experience where Riviera light and Andean air coexist on the same canvas, melting into each other and ultimately uniting different worlds into one. And in this unity of contrasts resides the bonheur (happiness) alluded to in the title of Dominique Pavard’s exhibition.
VISITOR INFORMATION
Dominique Pavard – La peinture du bonheur
17 September – 12 October, 2025
Espace Miramar, Cannes
Tuesday – Sunday, 10am – 12pm and 1pm – 6pm
Free admission
CONTACT DETAILS
Espace Miramar
35 Rue Pasteur
06400 Cannes
Tel: +33 (0)4 93 43 86 26
All photos courtesy Mairie de Cannes; all photos as credited
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