COLETTE LEINMAN
"Red, The ultimate shield color "
Red carries within it a fundamental duality. It is the life force, circulating blood, warming fire, but it is also wound, conflagration, and destruction. Red, in our global geopolitical context where wars, catastrophes and new forms of chaos invade our screens, is not a neutral color. It is often, by tradition, a proscribed color, often kept at a distance, for fear of letting the pigment merge with the blood of immediate realities.
To choose red here is to choose intrusion. It is to refuse the silence imposed by modesty, to prefer the cry of the canvas and to bring together the maturity of contemporary abstraction and the figurative flashes of yesterday, breaking linear time and replacing it with a geography of urgency.
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But red is also the ultimate shield color. Its function in the analysis of symbolic visual discourse is not based on pacification, but on confrontation: red protects through its intrinsic violence. It operates according to a magic mirror logic, based on the principle that like repels like. To ward off death, disease, or spirits, we brandish the color of alert and transgression.
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So, red transcends mere visual experience, engaging all the senses. When confronted with these paintings saturated in this color, synesthesia occurs. “The taste of red” acts as a physiological shock. It is precisely this sensory aggression that gives it its protection function: Fixing it to a canvas is an attempt to tame a destructive force, to capture the entropy of red—this tendency of energy to disperse and tend toward chaos —. Then, the color of destruction is used to absorb the destructive shock from the outside.
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- Colette Leinman
Abstraction en rouge, 2026. Mixed media on paper - 70 x 100 cm
Le goût du rouge, 2025. Oil on transparent paper - 70 x 100 cm
Biography
CV
Colette Leinman, born in Mont-Saint-Aignan, France, is a multidisciplinary artist based in Israel. Her artistic discipline encompasses painting, installation art, and video art, with a particular focus on mixed media on cardboard and oil on canvas. Leinman is best known for her experimental approach, particularly her use of different shades of blue in her collections. Even when employing conventional techniques like oil painting, she applies them in an unconventional manner, using extremely thin, lacquer-like layers that require extended drying times.
Leinman’s work delves into abstract and experimental art, characterized by her meticulous layering and innovative use of color. Her important projects include the “Deep Blue Collection,” which showcases her mastery of blue hues and layering techniques, and “N’hommades,” a series that further explores her abstract and experimental themes. Her unique approach and dedication to experimentation distinguish her in the contemporary art scene.
Colette Leinman has exhibited her work in notable venues, including “La nuit je dessinerai des soleils” at Galerie Yad Labanim in Rishon Letsion, Israel; “Le Goût du bleu” at Galerie SAGA in Jaffa, Israel; and “Le Goût du bleu II” at Citoyens à Caen in Caen, France. Her works are held in prestigious collections such as the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Foundation Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty Art Collection, and the Arturo Schwartz collection in Milan, Italy. Additionally, her pieces are part of the AKIM Decorated Masks at Sotheby’s Auction in Tel-Aviv, Israel, and various private collections worldwide, including those of the Stern Family in New York and M. Wolkowicz in Paris.
​Selected Solo Shows
2023 La nuit je dessinerai des soleils, Galerie Yad Labanim, Rishon Letsion, Israel
2022 Le Goût du bleu, Galerie SAGA, Jaffa, Israel.
Le Goût du bleu II, Citoyens à Caen, Caen, France.
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Selected Group Exhibitions
2026 In Search of Habitable Futures, curated by Siddhant Khattri, Susan Fraser-Hughes and Rajul Shah, Vedica Art Studios and Gallery, Mumbai, India
2025 The Warrior Empath, curated by Dorron Britz, Vedica Art Studios and Gallery, Paris, France
2025 Parasitó, in collaboration with the Consulate of Mexico in Mumbai, Vedica Art Studios and Gallery, Mumbai, India
2025 La Rupture du Désir, Vedica Art Studios and Gallery, Paris, France
2024 The Power of Blue, Vedica Art Studios and Gallery, Mumbai, India
2023 Shades of Israel – My Altneuland (curator: Flametta Maregani), Dystopia II; Jewish Museum of Lecce, Italy.
2023 The Road to the Pole, Litvak Gallery, Tel-Aviv, Israel
2023 Dystopia, The Art and Soul of Tel Aviv-Yafo; Kalisher (curator: Flametta Maregani), Autumn, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
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Selected Collections
AKIM Decorated Masks, Sotheby’s Auction, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Artists Messengers of Peace, Dr. Fisher Art for Peace, Israel.
Arturo Schwartz, Milan, Italy.
Foundation Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty Art Collection, Israel.
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel.
J-L. Sebag, Paris, France.
M. Wolkowicz, Paris, France.
Stern Family, New-York, USA.
World Club Travel, London, England.
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Selected Publications
“Building the collective ethos of the surrealist group” in The Exhibition Catalogue in Ethos Collectif et Identités sociales, Prof. R.Amossy (dir.), Ed. Garnier Classique, pp. 193-209, Paris, France (2021).
“Creation of the Artistic Patrimony in the ‘Musée de poche’ collection, in L’image de l’écrivain dans les collections demonographies illustrées D. Martens, G. Yanoshevsky, (director) (Nottingham French Studies, Edinburgh University Press, England (2019).
Les catalogues d’expositions surréalistes à Paris entre 1924 et 1939, N.Y. Ed. Rotopi/Brill, Amsterdam, (2015).
“A catalogue of a Dali exhibition on Art” in How to speak on art? Semiotic and discursive approaches, Melissa Barkat-Defradas and Stephanie Benoist (director), CNRS Editions, Paris, France (2013).
Publication of Poems and Works of art in « Continuum », Review of writers of French expression in Israel. (2013 – 2023).
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Professional Contributions
2007-2024 Member of the research Group ADARR (Research), the Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
2024 Poems’ translation from Hebrew to French with Ilai Rovner: “poems of October 7” Makom Leshira with the collaboration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
2022 Auction in favor of the “Greater than life” Association, Paris
2000-2024 Member of the Association of Israeli Writers of French Expression
2005-2007 Member of the Museum Committee at the Ministry of Education and Sport.
2011 Co-organizer of the Poetry evening at the Tel-Aviv French Institute: “Poèmes d’amour sur Rotchild”
2006 Co-organizer of the International Symposium, “Paul Cézanne 1906-2006” – Process and reception, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
2004 Co-editor with David Mendelson; Claude Vigée traducteur : “Toute langue en ce monde est d’abord un exil’, Emergence des Francophonies, Limoges, ed. Presses Universitaires de Limoges
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Education
2007 – 2011 Ph.D. The Shirley and Leslie Porter School of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
Doctoral thesis: “Catalogs of surrealist exhibitions”, 1924-1938″, under the supervision of Professor Ruth mossy.
1998 – 2000 M.A. The Shirley and Leslie Porter School of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
Thesis: “The deletion of the subject in René Magritte’s visual and verbal artwork”, under the supervision of Professor Ruth Amossy
1987 – 1992 B.A. French Department, Bar-Ilan University, Israel.
1987 – 1992 B.A. French Department, Bar-Ilan University, Israel.
1986 – 1990 The Painting and Sculpture College, Ramat-Gan, Israel
