Pierre Molinier

Born in 1900 in Agen (France), PIERRE MOLINIER, a fetishist and transvestite artist, was a stranger of worldwide notoriety. No book or exhibition about the body, or about gender fluidity, or sexual deviancy would be complete without a work by the man whose “genius” André Breton admired in a memorable essay of 1956.

Yet his work remains largely inaccessible. Pierre Molinier created astounding self-portraits, until the year 1976 when he committed suicide in Bordeaux by shooting himself in the mouth. Painted or photographed, extremely sophisticated in both staging and technique, his works span the entire spectrum of self-eroticism. Kamel Mennour first exhibited his work in 2000, and is now the President of the Comité Molinier, an association of experts representing the estate of the artist and perpetuating the legacy of his oeuvre.