Jarrion works across oil on canvas, mixed media, collage, hand-painted and patinaed ceramic sculpture, and bronze. His subject matter returns repeatedly to musicians, seated figures, animals, and still lifes, transformed through strong geometry, exaggerated proportion, and controlled color. His exhibition record spans three continents, including Quest for Impact at BTAG in Barcelona in 2002, Japan Je T’Adore at The Ghetto in Tokyo in 2008, Purity in Motion at Sacred Gallery in New York in 2011, the Beverly Hills Art Show in 2012, the JNA Gallery in Santa Monica in 2014, the Palm Springs Modernism Show in 2023, 2024, and 2025, and the Hamptons Fine Art Fair in 2025. His visual vocabulary carries naturally from painting into sculpture, with the same angular faces and simplified bodies that appear on canvas becoming physical forms in clay, terracotta, and bronze. In three dimensions, surface texture becomes an active element of composition, reflecting the handmade quality central to his practice.
Pascal Jarrion
Pascal Jarrion was born in 1961 in Perpignan, France, a region with deep Catalan roots whose unique light and landscape have shaped artists before him, including Picasso, Van Gogh, and Maillol. He received his formal training at Les Beaux-Arts de Perpignan, where he developed a classical foundation in fine art. Drawn to opportunities not yet available in France, he moved to London and opened a tattoo studio in Camden Town, spending his first six years there refining his craft by always working from original drawings. Through that discipline, he developed a distinctive visual language, an unusual mix of Cubist deconstruction, Art Deco elegance, and classical form, that earned him international recognition and participation in Tattoo Art Today at Somerset House in London in 2014. In 2005 he relocated to Los Angeles to devote himself fully to his primary passions of painting and sculpture. His work is held in private collections and museums internationally, and in 2024 he completed a major commissioned bronze sculpture for the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University in Orange, California, after which the museum acquired additional paintings and sculptures for its permanent collection.
Jarrion works in the spirit of the great Modernist movements of the early twentieth century without simply reproducing the past. Figures are reduced, reshaped, and reassembled into forms that are simultaneously abstract and warm, geometric and human. His goal, in his own words, is a vision of subdued color, strong lines, and internal movement that produces what he calls “immediately classic abstracts.” The Cubist influence is apparent but never cold; there is personality, humor, and emotion in the figures even after they have been thoroughly abstracted.
Key Influences
- Cubism: His deconstruction of the figure into overlapping planes and simultaneous viewpoints places him directly in the tradition of Picasso and Braque while remaining distinctly personal.
- Art Deco Geometry: His sensitivity to proportion, stylization, and the relationship between fine art and decorative form gives his work a natural affinity with the Art Deco aesthetic.
- Catalan Heritage: Growing up in a region that shaped Picasso, Maillol, and countless others gave his visual imagination a particular Mediterranean grounding that runs through all his work.
- Tattoo Craft: His years of working exclusively from original drawings in London gave him an exceptional command of line and composition that underpins everything he makes.
- Hilbert Museum Commission: His 2024 bronze commission for Chapman University’s permanent collection marked his arrival as a sculptor whose work is taken seriously by institutional collectors.
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