French polar explorer, ethnologist and draughtsman, born on 28 June 1907 in Geneva, died on 7 March 1995 in Bora Bora (French Polynesia).
Life
A student at the École centrale de Lyon, Paul-Émile Victor then served in the Navy and the air force. In 1934 he persuaded Jean-Baptiste Charcot to take him to Greenland aboard the Pourquoi-Pas ?; he spent a year with three companions among the Inuit of Ammassalik. In 1936 he crossed the ice sheet by dog sled with Robert Gessain, Michel Perez and Eigil Knuth: 825 kilometres in 44 days, from west to east.
During the Second World War he served in the United States Air Force. In 1947 he founded the Expéditions polaires françaises, which would carry out some hundred and fifty missions in the Arctic and Antarctic, notably in Adélie Land. He later retired to Bora Bora, where he died.
The work
“Tell me what you draw, and I’ll tell you who you are”…
So many pieces of the puzzle of his personality, his drawings carry within them what he was. Tender and never unkind, they exude humanity. Precise and lively, they prove his gift for observation. Colourful and teeming, they burst with his unfailing life force, the force he drew from within to pick himself up wherever he had fallen. Whimsical and even zany, they also show how well he knew not to take himself seriously.
Inspired by other painters or wholly original, PEV’s drawings are the fruit of his insatiable curiosity and his constant openness to something else. Graphite pencil, ballpoint, pen and ink, dry or wax crayon, felt-tip, paint, raw ink, liquid glue…
Try everything, attempt everything. To learn, to understand, but also to have fun… At the risk of going off in all directions, of which Paul-Émile Victor was perfectly aware: not without humour, he created an art movement (with himself as its only member) which he called “Acanthomism”, because “the acanthus leaf (known to everyone for its use in architectural ornament) is a plant with deeply cut leaves symbolising a multiple approach in every direction.”
Exhibitions and collections
- Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, July 2023: Paul-Émile Victor’s Polynesian drawings.
- Summer exhibition, Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, 10 to 26 July 2025: “The ethnologist, explorer and pataphysician Paul-Émile Victor”.