Why figurative painting is back - and where French painters fit in

For most of the late twentieth century, figuration was treated as a settled question. The recognisable human form had been decided against, at least in the rooms that set the terms, and painters who kept working from the body did so quietly. That has changed. Over the past fifteen years the figure has returned to the centre of contemporary painting, and it has returned on different terms than before.

This is not a nostalgic revival. The renewed interest in contemporary figurative painting is less about resemblance than about presence: how a face holds attention, how paint carries feeling, how a body on a surface still means something when so much of what we look at is a screen. From the Lille studio, this shift looks less like a trend and more like a correction.

What is actually returning

The word figuration covers a wide field, and the current revival draws on most of it. Some painters work close to portraiture. Others build the figure out of paint that behaves like abstraction until the last moment, when a head or a shoulder resolves. What these approaches share is a refusal to treat the image as merely decorative. The figure is doing work.

Three forces sit behind the change:

• A saturation with the purely conceptual, and a wish for painting that rewards slow looking rather than a wall label.
• A generation of collectors and curators who never accepted that figuration was finished, and who kept buying and showing it.
• The screen itself, which has made the handmade, physical image feel rare rather than ordinary.

Figuration is not the opposite of abstraction

The old argument set figuration against abstraction as if a painter had to choose. In practice the two have always leaned on each other. A convincing figure is built from abstract decisions about mass, edge and interval. The revival has made this obvious again, and it has given room to painters whose work lives in the passage between the two.

The French thread

France has a long, unbroken relationship with the painted figure, and that continuity matters now. The line runs from the great history painters through Courbet's insistence on the real, into the intimacy of Bonnard and Vuillard, and forward through the raw figuration of the post-war years. Even at the height of abstraction's dominance, French studios kept the body in view.

What distinguishes the French thread is a certain restraint. There is a preference for painting that holds something back, that lets the surface do the speaking rather than the subject. You see it in the muted registers, the trust in charcoal and drawing as the spine of a picture, the willingness to leave a face partly unresolved. This temperament is one reason French painters have adapted so naturally to the current moment, which values suggestion over spectacle.

Where a layered figurative painter sits

Adé Bernard works from Lille, in the Hauts-de-France, and her practice is a clear case of figuration built from abstract material. She works in collage, charcoal, oil and pigment, laying and scraping until a head, a figure or a landscape emerges from the accumulation. The image is arrived at rather than drawn onto a blank surface. Works such as Trio rouge et bleu, Couple and Bouddha begin as material and resolve into presence.

She describes the aim in her own words: all of her work is a search for the earlier subject, one that appears through viewpoints that converge into a single prism. That is a precise description of layered figuration. The subject is not invented at the outset. It is recovered, gradually, from what the paint has been allowed to become.

Honest positioning within the trend

It would be easy to overstate the case and claim she leads the revival. The truer statement is that her practice, developed over roughly forty years from 1986, sits comfortably within it and predates its fashion. She was building figures from abstract ground long before the market rediscovered the appetite for it. Her drawings and charcoal work make the method visible, and her paintings show where it leads. Her wider path and exhibitions, including the Salon d'Automne and a showing at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in 2022, place her among painters who kept faith with the figure through the years when it was unfashionable to do so.

What the revival asks of a collector

For anyone building a collection now, the return of figuration is an opportunity and a test. The opportunity is obvious: there is a great deal of strong figurative work being made. The test is discrimination, because a revival attracts imitation. The useful question is not whether a painting looks figurative but whether the figure was earned. Was it built, worked for, arrived at? Or was it simply illustrated because faces sell?

• Look for surfaces that show decisions, not just finish.
• Prefer work where abstraction and figuration are in genuine tension.
• Trust painters with a long practice over painters with a sudden style.

Frequently asked questions

Why is figurative painting popular again?

After decades in which conceptual and abstract work set the terms, audiences and collectors have returned to painting that rewards slow, physical looking. The screen has made the handmade image feel rare, and the figure remains the most direct way for a painting to hold a viewer.

Is figurative painting the opposite of abstraction?

No. A convincing figure is built from abstract choices about mass, edge and colour. Much of the strongest current work, including Adé Bernard's, lives in the passage between the two rather than choosing one.

What makes French figurative painting distinctive?

A tradition of restraint: muted registers, trust in charcoal and drawing, and a willingness to leave the subject partly unresolved so the surface can speak. That temperament suits the present moment well.

How does Adé Bernard fit into the revival?

She builds figuration from abstract material in collage, charcoal, oil and pigment, and has done so across roughly forty years. Her practice predates the current fashion and sits honestly within it rather than leading it.

If you want to see how a figure is built rather than drawn, look through the works or read more about the studio path. Paintings are available directly from the Lille studio by appointment, and you are welcome to get in touch.