Image: BACKSLASH, Paris
Pauline Bazignan will present ‘Sfondo’, her first solo exhibition at BACKSLASH, bringing together paintings and sculptures shaped by her continuing engagement with Italian Renaissance art. The exhibition will open on September 5, 2026, at the gallery’s Paris space and remain on view through October 10.
The new body of work focuses particularly on the landscape surrounding Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’. Rather than treating the celebrated portrait as a fixed image, Bazignan examines the distant terrain behind the figure and attempts to reconstruct what the exhibition describes as its hidden dimensions. The title, ‘Sfondo’, is the Italian word for “background.”
Bazignan’s paintings are built through successive layers of pigment. Water is then used to dissolve and carry away portions of the paint, altering the image and producing variations across the series. The figure of Monna Lisa appears with differing degrees of clarity, while the landscape gradually becomes the principal subject. The process also establishes a connection with Leonardo’s technique of sfumato, whose atmospheric transitions have long been associated with his paintings.
The exhibition extends research Bazignan has previously undertaken around Leonardo’s ‘The Last Supper’ and the natural horizons appearing in the backgrounds of the Florentine master’s works. In this presentation, the artist’s dialogue with Leonardo also moves into three dimensions. Several sculptures from one of Bazignan’s emblematic series are described as using misty blues and earthy tones evocative of imagined landscapes, engaging with both Leonardo’s palette and his compositions.
A diptych inspired by Paolo Uccello’s ‘The Battle of San Romano’ will open the exhibition. BACKSLASH presents the work as a transition between Bazignan’s previous body of work and the new series installed upstairs. The exhibition therefore links her earlier Renaissance references with a more concentrated investigation of the background as an independent field of perception.
Bazignan graduated from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Paris and was represented for many years by Praz-Delavallade Gallery. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art at Fontevraud, the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, the Chapelle de Thonon-les-Bains and the Villa Datris Foundation. In 2023, she presented work in ‘Immortelle’ at MO.CO. Montpellier. Her multidisciplinary practice has also included a tapestry made with Manufacture Robert Four, a hand-knotted rug produced with MLM Créations and a bespoke fragrance created for her 2016 exhibition ‘Vulcano’ in Berlin.
‘Sfondo’ opens at BACKSLASH, 29 Rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, Paris, on Saturday, September 5, from 2 to 8pm, with the artist present from 4pm. The exhibition runs from September 5 through October 10, 2026; the gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 2 to 7pm.
