Skira Pierre was born in Paris to a well-known Swiss art dealer and publisher Albert Skira. His wartime childhood made for a peripatetic early life moving between the Alps, Geneva, the South of France and Paris. Along the way he encountered some of the greatest names in art such as Matisse who he watched do his famous cutouts and he stayed with Picasso in the south of France. He has been influenced by Franz Kline, Emilio Verona and Piet Mondrian. He abandoned an early interest in abstraction and moved to what was then called New Figuration, sometime in the 1960s. He was particularly drawn to painting detailed studies of books in the manner of 17th century art such as the work we acquired.
He exhibited for the first time in 1962 followed by a solo show two years later. In 1967 he won the Prix de la Biennale de Paris. In 1975 he moved from working with oils to pastels and he has used this medium ever since. He has been showing all over Europe and most recently in London at the Redfern Gallery in 2016 and 2019 and the Picasso Museum in Antibes in 2022, all featuring abstraction. His work is held in many important public collections, including the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, and the Palais de l’Élysée.
