Bernar Venet was born in Château-Arnoux, France, in 1941. Widely regarded as one of the most prominent French artists working today, Venet has been at the forefront of contemporary art since the early 1960s. At the age of twenty, he began developing groundbreaking artistic vocabulary that brought together matter, form, and method, articulating new concepts through the interplay of logic, intuition, and indeterminacy. His material poetry combines rationality and intuition, bringing intellectual precision into dialogue with powerful visual impact. Throughout his practice, Venet has continuously explored the relationship between matter and concept, allowing form, time, and thought to converge within a highly distinctive artistic language.
Venet represented France at the 13th São Paulo Biennale and participated in documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977 and the Venice Biennale in 1978. In 2000, his new series of wall paintings, Major Equations, was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, Brasília and São Paulo, the Centre d'art contemporain Georges Pompidou in Cajarc, and MAMCO in Geneva. In 2002, he presented an evening of performances incorporating poetry, film, and music at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Major exhibitions in recent years include The Conceptual Years 1966–1976 at MAMAC (Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain), Nice, in 2018; Bernar Venet, retrospective 2019–1959 at the Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon in 2018–2019; The Hypothesis of Gravity at Louvre-Lens in 2021–2022; Another Language for Painting at He Art Museum, Foshan, in 2021–2022; and Bernar Venet, 1961–2021: 60 Years of Performance, Painting and Sculpture at Kunsthalle Berlin in 2022.