Career path

The Maestro of Colour

Bernard Cadène is not interested in half measures: “Polychromy or nothing! Colour is light, gaiety, music and friends. It is love and humour hand in hand”

Bernard Cadène, born on 9th September 1942 in the department of Aveyron, is a French painter, sculptor, and publicist who lives near Toulouse.

The grandson of a music teacher from Aveyron, the son of an accordionist father and a mother who taught home economics in a secondary school, Bernard grew up in Albi and then Toulouse.

His parents wanted him to become an accountant but, already inspired by the family tradition, he became passionate about music and, in a more personal way, about painting. He therefore studied the violin for twelve years and then the double bass, and in 1961, he joined the School of Fine Arts in Toulouse. By day, he studied, and by night, he played in a variety of bands. Later on, his passion for jazz led him to co-create the Jazz Festival in Comminges.

In 1967, he obtained his diploma to teach drawing from the Toulouse School of Fine Arts but rather than teaching, he decided to go into creative advertising and later audiovisual production. He had a successful career but never stopped painting.

At the beginning of 1995, he returned to painting full-time and has not left his studio since.

He has received several awards during his career: 18 First Prizes for drawing and painting and the Grand Prize in the Lefranc competition (1967). He has had 139 solo exhibitions in France and abroad. Bernard Cadène is also a member of the Occitania Academy of Art, Literature, Science and Popular Traditions.

Cadène’s favourite master painters are, amongst others, Picasso, El Greco, Bacon and Soulages. He began by painting with blacks and greys in 1970, which are still included in his palette, before working with colour in 1995, which exploded into his works.

He directs colour with his hands when his brush becomes the conductor’s baton. Out of his movements is born music that fascinates and hypnotises. Everything in Cadène’s expression reflects a continuing love affair with colour, which he has reinvented with every brush stroke for more than 60 years.

To date, Bernard Cadène has participated in 146 solo exhibitions and 82 group exhibitions in France and abroad. His works are part of private and institutional collections in 26 countries.