Sache Sosno

Alexandre Joseph Sosnowsky, known as Sacha Sosno (1937, Marseille - 2013, Monaco), is a French sculptor, painter and visual artist associated with the École de Nice. He spent his childhood between Riga and Nice, where he met Henri Matisse at an early age. In the 1950s, he met Yves Klein and Arman, who had a profound influence on his artistic thinking. Moving to Paris in the late 1950s, he studied political science and oriental languages, while working as a photographer and reporter, notably in Northern Ireland, Bangladesh and Biafra. Back in Nice, he founded the magazine Sud-Communications in 1961, in which he published the first theory of the École de Nice. Sosno went on to develop his major concept of "obliteration" - "hiding in order to see better" - which he applied to painting, sculpture, photography and architecture. His monumental outdoor works, including the famous Tête Carrée housing the Louis-Nucéra library in Nice, earned him international recognition. His work, made up of voids, masks and interrupted forms, invites the viewer to mentally recompose the image, making absence a veritable motor of perception.