The illustrious ones
From encounters to portraits
Ship Crew
She-wolves and wolves
Bestiary
Little stories in warehouse
Les ombres d'Alice
Birds and Mothers
A l'enfant qui nous garde
Others
Biography
Cécile Raynal is a French sculptor who lives and works in Normandy, France.
For several years, Cécile Raynal has had two passions : dance and sculpture. As of 2007 she has focused her work on portrait, scrutinizing faces like veritable geographies and places of endless souvenirs.
The substance for her work is clay. She gives it a great amplitude of motion, has a capacity for improvisation and a remarkable finesse in the detail of its expressions.
Sculpture is for her a way of exploring the world, between documentary and fiction. Thus she often sets up her workshop in remote, forgotten or marginal places, that she goes over and then reconstructs in clay. A prison, a retirement home, a hospital, a convent, a cargo-ship… are among the places in which she invites the inhabitants to pose for her, so as to sculpt their portraits and capture these rare encounters.
Sculpture offers the possibility, in traveling the world, of finding its origins, its structure in a supremely documentary register.
«From either fortuitous or sought after encounters my work stems from a sculpted portrait, a totemic record of each of these confrontations, and builds itself on the complicity, the exchanges and the correspondence that results from them. It’s about the encounters and about the places where the encounters happen. These busts, these figures, these portraits imbricate human relation, artistic flair, “the trade of living”»…
And born of these sculpted encounters are the frameworks of blackened and atemporal portraits.
In amongst all the different human portraits will sometimes be those of objects or animals. The latter two being produced in her main workshop in Normandy, in a narrative taking into account mythology, tales, psyche and memory.
Between each residence is the very necessary spent in her proper workshop in Normandy where the firing takes place. Cécile Raynal uses chamotte (grog), the only clay capable of withstanding firing temperatures of 1200º and the subsequent smoking phase. This final stage, inspired by the Japanese method ‘raku’, imparts the black, grey and metallic aspect on the pieces that make it difficult to determine what the sculpture is made of. The bulk of the sculpture’s supports are made of wood or steel.
Her Norman workshop enables her to get away from the outside, to traverse the interior of the sculpture, and develop more shapes, more narratives, more mythologies. In this place off the beaten track, the work commences, recommences, ripens, is embellished, is found and is finalized.
To address Cécile Raynal’s sculpture is to delve into the very meaning of an artistic process in which it is difficult to separate art and life.
Installation view of the exhibition “Petites histories en réserve” by Cécile Raynal, Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris (France), 2018
Installation view of the exhibition “Petites histories en réserve” by Cécile Raynal, Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris (France), 2018
Installation view of the exhibition “Femme(s) !” by Cécile Raynal, Musée Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye (France), 2023
Installation view of the exhibition “Femme(s) !” by Cécile Raynal, Musée Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye (France), 2023
View of Cécile Raynal’s exhibitions: À la Table des Dames, Abbaye de Montivilliers, Normandy, FR, 2025
View of Cécile Raynal’s exhibitions: À la Table des Dames, Abbaye de Montivilliers, Normandy, FR, 2025
View of Cécile Raynal’s exhibitions at Gonneville-la-Mallet village, Normandy, FR, 2024
CV
Education
- Graduate from National School of Fine Art, Toulouse, France
Solo exhibitions
- 2025 – At the Ladies’ Table (À la table des Dames), solo show, Montivilliers Abbey (Montivilliers, France)
- 2021 – Les miettes, solo show, memorial project for the Struthöf camp (France)
- 2020 – Pour la peau, solo show, Nancy Huston’s House (Paris, France)
- 2020 – Le survivant, solo show, Portrait of Pierre Rolinet, last survivor of the Natzweiler-Struthöf concentration camp (France)
- 2019 – À l’enfant qui nous garde, solo show, Natecia maternity (Lyon, France)
- 2019 – Petites histoires en Seine, solo show, CNAM of Saint Denis (Saint Denis, France)
- 2019 – Des oiseaux et des mères, solo show, Cultural Center of Bolbec (Bolbec, France)
- 2018 – Petites histoires en réserve, solo show, Museum of Arts and Métiers (Paris, France)
- 2017/2018 – Olympe de Gouges, solo show, Collection of La Dépêche Group Foundation (Toulouse, France)
- 2016 – Des bêtes en ce château, solo show, Château des Terrasses (Cap d’Ail, France)
- 2016 – Solo show, Gallery Le Hangar (Évreux, France)
- 2015 – Persona, ae, solo show, Sculptures Garden of La Celle Saint-Cloud for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (La Celle Saint-Cloud, France)
- 2015 – Des Ombres d’Alice au Vestibule des Pommes, solo show, Mutualiste Institute Montsouris (Paris, France)
- 2015 – Déjeuner sans l’Herbe, solo show, Center for Contemporary Art of Matmut (Saint-Pierre-de-Varengeville, France)
- 2014 – Exhibition with the artist Tibo Streicher, duo show, OFI Asset Management (Paris, France)
- 2014 – So Sorry, solo show, Rouen’s Court of Appeal (Rouen, France)
- 2014 – Tant que tournent les rues…, solo show (Montreal, Canada)
- 2013 – Hommes d’équipage, solo show, Cultural Center des Docks Vauban in Le Havre and Pavillon M for the Marseille-Provence event (France)
- 2013 – Déjeuner sans l’Herbe, solo show, Museum of Fine Arts (Évreux, France), Normandy Impressionist event and Gallery Le Hangar (Évreux, France)
- 2013 – So Sorry, solo show, Rouen’s Court of Appeal (Rouen, France)
- 2012 – De l’oeil des statues, solo show, Château du Val-aux-Grès (Bolbec, France), Museum of Art, History and Archeology (Évreux, France), and Gallery Le Hangar (Évreux, France)
- 2011 – Autour de l’échelle, solo show, Château des Terrasses (Cap d’Ail, France)
- 2010 – Persona, ae, solo show, Detention Center of Caen, Abbaye aux Dames (Caen, France), and CCI of Le Havre (Le Havre, France)
- 2009 – Echelle 1, solo show, Abbaye-aux-Hommes (Caen, France)
- 2009 – Envisage, with Sophie Lebel, duo show, City Hall Theater (Le Havre, France)
- 2008 – Fils de…, solo show, gardens of the CHU (Rouen, France)
- 2008 – Portrait à l’échelle, solo show, CHU exhibition area/door 10 (Rouen, France)
Group exhibitions
- 2025 – Harmonie des contraires: Douceur et Force au Féminin, group show, Agnès Szaboova Gallery (Le Havre, France)
- 2023 – Ailyos, art et nature, group show (Leysin, Switzerland)
- 2023 – Femme(s)!, group show, Departmental Museum Maurice Denis (Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France)
- 2022 – Rémanence, group show, Le Grand Cellier (Longueville, France)
- 2021 – Monstre, group show, Berst Gallery (Paris, France)
- 2021 – Les Marins d’a-bord, group show, LH Port Center (Le Havre, France)
- 2021 – Hommes d’équipage, group show, Library Niemeyer (Le Havre, France)
- 2021 – Non essentiel?, group show, Cultural Center of Val-aux-Grès de Bolbec (France)
- 2019 – OutrAmour, group show, Hoffstetter Gallery (Fribourg, Switzerland)
- 2017 – Group show, Toulouse Contemporary Art Fair (Toulouse, France)
- 2016 – Sculpture tour of Évreux, group show (Évreux, France)
- 2014 – Travers/ées, group show in several institutions (Rouen, France)
- 2012 – Group show, Gallery Le Hangar (Évreux, France)
- 2012 – Sculpture tour, group show, Museum of Art, History and Archaeology (Évreux, France)
- 2012 – Group show, Biennale of Bois-Guilbert (Bois-Guilbert, France)
- 2009 – Féminin/pluriel, group show, Gallery Area (Paris, France)
Awards & Residencies
- 2019 – “A l’enfant qui nous garde”, Natecia maternity, Lyon (France)
- 2018/2019 – “Des Oiseaux et des mères”, Social Center of Champ des Oiseaux, Bolbec (France)
- 2017 – “De la main au feu”, Museum of Arts and Métiers, Saint Denis (France)
- 2014/2015 – “Les vestibules des pommes”, Child Psychiatry Unit of the Institute Montsouris, Paris (France)
- 2014/2015 – “Dans les Ombres d’Alice”, Child Psychiatry Unit of the University Hospital, Rouen (France)
- 2013 – “Tant que tournent les rues…”, University Hospital of Montreal, project supported by the Consulate of France and the Dalkia Group France, Montreal (Canada)
- 2011/2012 – “Hommes d’équipage”, aboard the container ship Fort Saint-Pierre of CMA-CGM
- 2011/2012 – “À l’endroit, au présent, à l’envers, à l’endroit…”, EHPAD of Flaubert Hospital, Bolbec (France)
- 2008/2009 – “Persona,ae : acteur, personne”, Detention Centre of Caen, Caen (France)
- 2006 – “Les iconoclasses”, Gallery Duchamps, Yvetot (France)
Commissions
- 2024 – Installation of the “Double-six” sculpture, Gonneville-la-Mallet (France)
- 2022 – Installation of the ‘Winston’ sculpture at Cap d’Ail (France)
Publications
- 2024 – Documentary film “Sculpter la mémoire” by Jean-Marie Gigon about Cécile Raynal’s sculptural encounter with resistance fighter and deportee Pierre Rolinet, produced by SaNoSi Productions, broadcasted on France Television (France)
- 2018 – “Mémoires de braise”, monographic work prefaced by Nancy Huston, Privat Editions, Toulouse (France)
- 2015 – “Des Ombres d’Alice au Vestibule des Pommes”, exhibition catalogue, Montsouris Institute, Paris (France)
- 2013 – “Hommes d’équipage”, exhibition catalogue, Docks Vauban, Le Havre (France)
- 2010 – “Persona,ae : acteur, personne”, logbook of residency in the Detention Center of Caen, Caen (France)
Articles
Artistics at Les Traversées du Marais : Cécile Raynal, Sculpted Dialogues
From September 4–6, 2026, Artistics will take part for the first time in Les Traversées du Marais, the annual cultural festival that transforms...
Cécile Raynal: At the Ladies’ Table
Throughout the summer, Montivilliers Abbey in Normandy (France) will be hosting the “A la table des Dames” exhibition, retracing the last fifteen...
Public art: Double Six by Cécile Raynal
Double Six, an imposing sculpture by Cécile Raynal installed in the centre of the Normandy village of Gonneville-la-Mallet (France), was inaugurated...
