by There was a time when the Nicolas Party was persecuted by the police for the decoration of trains and buildings across Europe with its distinctive street art. Now large galleries and museums invite him to unleash his visions on their walls.
His most recent extraordinary piece, a large murals in a soft pastel, which is inspired by the works of a Dutch artist from the 17th century and a British champion from the 18th century, came about in the Holburne Museum in Bath.
When the work was completed, the party said that he was enthusiastic that the Holburne, who was housed in a late 18th century building, and the custodian of paintings by people such as Thomas Gainsborough and George Stubbs organized his work. “It’s great to be in a large place like this.”
For his new play, his first major wall picture in an English gallery, borrowed from a small oil painting in the collection of Holburne, a fight between the farmers, by Benjamin Gerritsz. Cuyp, a Dutch painter who is known for his allegorical oil panels and landscapes, influenced by Rembrandt.
For over four days he created the rather violent picture over an entire wall of a gallery and increased a lot of pastel dust.
He used pastels for a second, smaller work again, this time on linen – a representation of two horses in the style of Stubbs’ horse and lion paintings, with a calm, ghostly human face between them.
The second work was then hung in the middle of the murals and hidden a large part of the campaign. According to Benjamin Gerritsz, 2025, the party’s murals are referred to as a fight between farmers. The second smaller piece is portrait with two horses, 2025.
The artist said he was attracted to the Dutch painting because he liked the “dark, funny” topic. “It is not a portrait or a sweet landscape, it’s more unusual.” The murals are a close copy and the party said that the addition of the second element – the horses and the face picture – made it his work.
It was not worried that the most dramatic part of the mural was hidden behind the smaller picture, he said. “I think my work becomes my work when I put them together.”
A chamber had to be built in front of the wall so that the party works. The wall must be prepared with acrylic paint, water and sawdust to create a sand papent texture that holds the pastel.
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“That makes a little chaos and the pastel creates a lot of dust. So we have to be enclosed.” Then he uses both hands, apply the pastel and rubs it to create textures and colors. “It’s pretty exhausting, so I use both arms.”
The piece is the show stopper in an exhibition called Nicolas Party: Copper & Dust, which contains two rooms of smaller works, including striking landscapes, still life and portraits that were made from oil on copper.
Chris Stephens, the director of the Holburne, said that the gallery was excited to show the work of the party. “With his deep knowledge of art history, especially his interest in the Dutch painting from the 17th century and in pastels of the 18th century, both contain both in the Holburne’s collection, Nicolas’ art is in a perfect environment.”
