About me

On 1 February 1968 Frédéric Jamet was born in Angers, the capital of Anjou, the French region of the Loire Valley, famous for its gentle French way of life.

Frédéric’s parents worked a lot and rarely saw their son grow up, and although the moments they shared with him were always intense and joyful, they were still relatively rare.

A caring grandmother will pass on to him a taste for beautiful things, teach him to marvel at the things in life: discovering the fauna and flora in nature, tasting a good meal, marvelling at a work of art, being enthusiastic about a film or a play, etc.

A bilingual French/English grandmother who will naturally teach her grandson the subtleties of the language of Shakespeare. A precious sesame for Frédéric which would open the doors to his American dream a few years later…

During his teenage years, Frédéric flew to the United States every summer to spend a month “immersed” in an American family that was friends with his parents. Passionate about art and history, this family introduced their young guest to the wealth of museums in Chicago and Detroit… A revelation mixed with emotions for Frédéric, who was sensitive to the beauty and messages of the works on display…

Another passion was born at the same time for Frédéric: that of fine mechanical engineering, whether it be motorbikes, cars or, a little later, luxury watches… A logical and natural passion for cars… and anything with an engine: in the family we love beautiful things, and therefore beautiful cars.

Cars with innovative and well-designed lines like the Porsches driven by his father, his grandmother’s Renault Dauphine or the Alfa Romeos sold to all the members of the family by Frédéric’s uncle and the Alfa Romeo dealer in Angers…

As for his studies, after having obtained his literary baccalaureate with honours, he studied economic sciences at the University of Angers, then joined Sciences Po Bordeaux and brilliantly finished with a master’s degree in “risk management” at Sup de Co Bordeaux.

From 1994 onwards, he was at the origin of Candide’s international expansion. A tireless worker, he criss-crossed the world and set out to conquer the major cities: London, Berlin, Madrid, Warsaw, New York, Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai, Tokyo, Dubai…

Although he travels through these cities without having the time to go sightseeing, Frédéric never Frédéric never takes a small digital camera without it to capture a few images as “souvenir” postcards.

The photos are never taken at random: from a building with unusual architecture to a strangely decorated New York fire hydrant, a forgotten historical monument, Tokyo’s bicycles, Berlin’s pretzels, Hong Kong’s bay in the morning mist, a hotel porter’s smile, a guitar in the Hard Rock Café, or an unusual object, each one is imbued with a graphic elegance sublimated by black and white, telling a story and revealing the emotion felt by the photographer at the time of the shot.

In 1997, Frédéric started to paint with oil on canvas. Too many good experiences made him organise himself as a night painter… Darkness, red wine, some music or a film is his creative environment. He paints from darkness to dawn… rarely during the day.

Oils, acrylics, markers, collages, fusion: whatever the period, Frédéric’s works are an invitation to travel.

A joyful, urban, graphic journey; with multiple, warm colours, luminous and brilliant.

A generous invitation from the artist to follow him greedily through the dizzying mazes of the megalopolises that fascinate him, territories teeming with life where the omnipresent characters can be seen in the shadows of the felt-tip pens without ever appearing.

A desire to share that he took a long time, out of humility, to dare. We had to wait until the first days of summer 2021 for Frédéric to reveal his work to the public in Anjou at his first exhibition, “Geometric Abstractions”.

Final words

The symbolism of the “E”

The fifth letter of the alphabet, the letter “e” is the lucky letter for the artist: E for Evelyne, his mother, who passed on to him his natural gift for art and painting; E for Elise, Eglantine and Eugénie, his three daughters, who accompanied him on his travels to the four corners of the world as soon as they could, and who ordered his first box of oil paints from Father Christmas.