The Son of Mr Uri Visiting the Cotel
Lélia Pissarro was born into a Jewish family in Paris, France on 27 July 1963, the third and youngest child of the artist Hugues Claude Pissarro and his first wife Katia, an art dealer. She was raised, until the age of eleven, by her grandparents in Clécy, Normandy, and also lived with her brother Joachim Pissarro, an art historian. There her interest in drawing and painting was nurtured by her grandfather Paulémile (the youngest son of Camille Pissarro), who taught her the fundamentals of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist techniques. She held her first exhibition at the Salon de la Jeune Peinture, subsequently taking part in an exhibition at the Luxembourg Museum in Paris. When she returned to her parents in Paris, her father, H. Claude Pissarro, tutored her until she enrolled at l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 1980s, later teaching art at the Moria School and studying oil painting restoration at the laboratory of the Louvre. She had solo exhibitions in Paris, Lyon, Mulhouse and Rennes. In 1988 she moved to London, England and in the same year participated in the international touring exhibition 'Pissarro: The Four Generations'. She has since exhibited frequently both in the UK and internationally, having moved gradually from the more traditional Post-Impressionist technique towards a more contemporary style. Lélia Pissarro lives and works in London. She is married to the art dealer David Stern, with whom she co-founded the Stern Pissarro Gallery in St James, Piccadilly.
