Eric Tournaire was born in 1958 in Africa, in Casablanca, Morocco. He lived there until 1974. In 1981, thanks to its education and scholarship, he spent one and a half months in Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, and Ghana. He returned to Morocco in 1999. He painted as an assistant of Claude Morin for 10 years, building its iconography of African inspiration. He lived and painted in Pennes – Mirabeau, still developing his particular universe. He writes:
Africa … Africa, the cradle of humanity, is one of my sources of inspiration most intense and the paintings of Korhogo, in northern Côte d’Ivoire. The magic of nature at large, with his powers and cosmogonies primitive touch me a lot.
In my paintings I try to refer to all these civilizations that succeeded and mixed in the crucible of the history of this continent. By overlay patterns, colors, and transparencies, I try to express a succession of images, legends, religions and myths together closely in the space of my paintings and drawings. To obtain a summary of these overlays I use different techniques with each other.
