NADJA Chien Bleu & Le Menteur

From 17 March to 8 April 2023, the Huberty & Breyne gallery is delighted to be hosting a new exhibition dedicated to the work of the artist Nadja.

Nadja was born in Egypt in 1955, and she and her family later went to live in Lebanon for several years. She is one of four children (one of her brothers being the well-known illustrator Grégoire Solotareff). Their mother, a painter, and father, a man passionate about literature, encouraged Nadja and her siblings to write and draw, and all would go on to forge careers for themselves in various artistic and literary fields. 

As an adult, Nadja started out doing fashion drawings for a couturier, and later for the magazine La Mode en peinture, which was asking artists to provide interpretations of fashion. In 1986, she launched a career as a children's author with the title Pourquoi les éléphants sont gris ? while continuing to devote herself to painting.

In Chien bleu, the album she published in 1989, the artist renders her images as a series of individual paintings. The book was very warmly received and would become a children's literary classic. A great many publications have followed, and in the 2000s Nadja began producing graphic novels, giving free reign to all three of her passions, drawing, painting and writing.

Today, the artist lives in Paris, with occasional stints in Brittany, dividing her time between her different creative practices.

This exhibition at Huberty & Breyne | Les Arts dessinés will be showing preparatory sketches for Chien bleu alongside drawings from Le Menteur, a comic book based on a short story by Henry James.

Exhibition from 17 March to 8 April 2023

Private view: Thursday 16 March 2023, from 6 pm to 9 pm, in the presence of the artist

Autograph session: Saturday April 8 2023

Works available to view online from 17 March 2023

Huberty & Breyne | Les Arts dessinés
19 rue Chapon, 75003 Paris