For more than thirty years, the artist Cécile Marchand has evolved in a unique, pop and quirky universe that plays with clichés and stands out with humor. Claiming to be an heir of pop art, the artist offers curious viewers a rather gentle and amusing satire of our society. While a vast majority of contemporary artists tend to sever ties with twenty centuries of Western painting to impose a supposed artistic identity, Cécile Marchand brilliantly revisits major themes of art history through a form dear to her: hippopotamuses. As recurring motifs in her work, the artist paints what she sees as a "universal figure," in its most diverse forms. Famous works by Botticelli, Ingres, or Delacroix gain a second life through Cécile Marchand, but above all, the artist offers a reinterpretation of these themes. Clearly updated and deliberately connected to our society, her paintings become true allegories.

The hippopotamus motif allows the artist to experiment with a world of shapes and postures, grace and voluptuousness, giving painting its noble status. At the crossroads of sacred and pagan, Cécile Marchand reinvents an anthropomorphic iconography where the body and the dreaminess it evokes are one of the strengths of her work. These modern forms, full and fluid, sometimes close to the world of comics, combine with the elegance and power of glazing techniques mastered by the artist, reminiscent of the Flemish masters. Cécile Marchand is not an iconoclast and does not desecrate works of art. Between tradition and modernity, by reclaiming some masterpieces of art history, she seeks to convey a simple and unpretentious message to the viewers. With a humanistic and committed approach, Cécile Marchand revives the pop art movement and successfully imposes her universe while creating a unique and recognizable identity.