Pessac: The dreamlike landscapes of a Bordeaux artist at the Jean Eustache cinema

Born in 1979 in Dijon to an anesthesiologist father and an artist mother, the budding artist grew up in a Franco-Algerian culture and was introduced to drawing and illustration at a very young age. During school-free days, he drew and painted in his mother’s studio. After studying humanities and fine arts in Bordeaux, he devoted himself entirely to painting and sculpture, following the paths of poetic reverie. “I work in my studio, painting with oil on canvas, but starting from preparatory observation sketches that I do outside,” said François Kobtane. “I like to bring out a predetermined part of the process and a part of randomness in my paintings.”

Toiles solaires

“I discovered François Kobtane’s paintings in his studio,” explains Zane Lukina, exhibition manager at the Jean-Eustache cinema during the opening on Wednesday, April 22, 2026. “The pictorial representation of the sun is a difficult subject, and François dares to paint it with talent in his paintings. One also feels this lightness of poetry that inspires him, as if he had kept his childlike gaze.”