Biography

Attracted very early by the arts, Catherine Mandron who graduated from the École Supérieure de Biologie et Biochimie, has only been able to dedicate herself to her creating passion much later. Since 1975, she has been able to study painting and sculpting at the Beaux-arts school, to finally choose mosaics as her main means of expression. Her artistic pursuit has also led her to study engraving at the International School in Venice. That mosaics can allow such a dynamic can surprise, but the progression and the sequence of the fragments (small marble cubes cut by hand) make it really possible, by slight movements in the shape and relative light, creating a vibrationclose to magic in a surface composed of thousands of juxtaposed elements made of subtle matter and perfect coloring. The movement issue is essential for Catherine Mandron. In Venice, it was the movement of the water, in Paris, it is the movement of the dance, or the one of a maestro’s hands: she always draws animated subjects. Being close to reality, she has studied different animals, including horses and her rooster, which she has observed and drawn from life along the years. The morphology of this rooster has been expressed in different sculptures, drawings, and engravings; resulting finally in a mosaic of rough volume, very natural. Catherine Mandron tends, in her work, toward a monumentality intended to be integrated in architecture: her mosaics, always large, express a mural necessity while keeping their originality and their “presence”.

Ricardo Licata

Sculptor and engraver from the start – she is still that – Catherine Mandron has found her ideal means of expression in mosaics. At the Beaux-arts school, she learnt the secrets under Ricardo Licata’s lead. The lapis-lazuli, the marble and other traditional materials are not enough for her. She combines in her compositions, minerals, of all colors, and types, gleaned during her hikes. In the panels – she can do big – she offers to enchant us by their polychrome enchantment, she knows how to subdue it, if needed, and makes it just as subtle in grayness. It is the movement itself that she transmits to these “stone feasts.” * And then there is a magnificent rooter, executed 3-dimensionally, and drawings which translate the same movement with only a few strokes.
Jean-Marie Dunoyer  Le Monde – Thursday October 4th, 1984