Chantal Joffe facts for kids

Chantal Joffe is a talented artist known for her big, expressive paintings. She was born in the USA on October 5, 1969, but now lives in London, England. Her art often shows women and children. In 2006, she won a special award called the Charles Wollaston Award from the Royal Academy.

About Chantal Joffe

Chantal Joffe was born in St. Albans, Vermont, USA. Her younger brother, Jasper Joffe, is also an artist and writer. Their mother, Daryll Joffe, is an artist too, and she paints with watercolours.

Chantal studied art at several famous schools. She went to Camberwell College of Arts in 1987-88. Then, she attended Glasgow School of Art from 1988 to 1991, where she earned her degree in Fine Art. She later got her master's degree in painting from the Royal College of Art in 1994.

She has received special awards for her art, like the Delfina Studio Trust Award (1994–96) and the Abbey Scholarship (1998–99). Chantal Joffe lives and works in London.

Chantal Joffe's Art Style

Chantal Joffe mostly paints portraits of women and children. Her paintings are often very large, sometimes as tall as 10 feet! She has painted her own mother many times over 30 years.

In an interview, Joffe said she loves painting women. She finds their bodies and clothes very interesting. She gets ideas for her paintings from family photos, advertisements, fashion magazines, and other pictures. She uses these photos as a starting point, but she adds her own unique twists to the faces and figures.

Joffe finds inspiration in the work of other artists, especially the photographer Diane Arbus. She said Arbus's photos have everything you could want in a human portrait.

One art critic described her paintings as "easy control" and "effortless." They might look simple or even childlike at first. However, the critic also noted that her art has a surprising, sometimes unsettling, feeling.

Some of her paintings are so huge that she needed scaffolding to reach the top parts. She uses big, bold brushstrokes and doesn't worry about paint drips. Sometimes, you can even see old outlines beneath the new paint. Her close-up paintings often show large, slightly uneven eyes and unusual body shapes, almost like a modern, cartoon-like Pablo Picasso.

In 2006, an editor named Colette Meacher called Joffe's large paintings "simply exquisite representations of femininity." Joffe often gets ideas from fashion models, pictures of her friends, and other artists' work. She likes to show women and children in natural, everyday poses.

Joffe's art reminds some people of Alice Neel, another artist known for her portraits. She also shares a connection with Joni Mitchell, a Canadian singer and artist. These artists are known for including feminist ideas in their work.

Exhibitions and Collections

Chantal Joffe's artwork has been shown all over the world. She has had solo exhibitions, meaning shows just for her art, in cities like London, Milan, Venice, Paris, New York, Helsinki, and Bologna. Her work has also been part of many group exhibitions with other artists.

In 2002, she was part of a show called The Bold and The Beautiful in London. This was a special exhibition because it was the first time Chantal, her mother Daryll Joffe, and her brother Jasper Joffe all showed their art together.

In 2006, Chantal Joffe won the £25,000 Charles Wollaston Award. This award is given for the "most distinguished work" at the Royal Academy summer exhibition. Her winning painting was called Blond Girl – Black Dress. The judges all agreed it was a very strong and striking painting.

Joffe's art has also been shown at the Jewish Museum in New York City. This includes exhibitions like Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings: Chantal Joffe in 2015 and Scenes from the Collection in 2019. Her work was also featured in the 2022 exhibition Women Painting Women at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

You can find Chantal Joffe's paintings in many important art collections around the world. These include the Saatchi Gallery in London, the Berardo Collection Museum in Lisbon, Portugal, and the Jewish Museum in New York, USA. She is represented by the Victoria Miro Gallery in London.

Her work is also in public collections in the UK, such as the Arts Council Collection and the Government Art Collection.

Awards and Recognition

Chantal Joffe has received many awards for her artistic talent:

• The Nat West 90’s Prize for Art (1991)
• The John Kinross Memorial Scholarship (1991)
• The Elizabeth Greenshields Award (1993)
• The Paris Studio Award, Royal College of Art (1993)
• The Delfina Studio Trust Award (1994–1996)
• The Abbey Scholarship from the British School at Rome (1998–1999)
• The Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition’s Wollaston Award (2006)

See also

In Spanish: Chantal Joffe para niños