Daughter of sculptor Louis Derbré, Mireille grew up surrounded by hands and matter. Since 2010, Biarritz is where she paints — bodies, faces, a southwestern light that has changed her palette entirely.
Born in Paris in 1950, Mireille Derbré was trained from childhood in her father’s studio — that of sculptor Louis Derbré. A singular school: learning to read volume, feel material, understand that space must be worked before it can be represented.
After studying at the École Supérieure Art et Technique in Boulogne-Billancourt, her decorative arts training led her to major projects across Paris. Painting imposed itself alongside, as a personal necessity that commissions alone could never satisfy.
From 1998 onwards, exhibitions in Parisian galleries and salons multiplied. She worked in her Marais studio, on-site and with models. Then came the turning point: in 2010, she packed up and settled in Biarritz, setting up her studio in southwest France.
What changes here is the light — and with it, colour. Her approach aligns with the early expressionists: a back-and-forth between reality and imagination, where drawing and brushwork echo the gestures of the sculptor. Her father is never far away.
Languid nudes, relaxed, fragmented, face-on, from behind — scenes of intimacy that are at once real and imagined. Portraits and landscapes receive the same economy of means: watercolours, inks, charcoal, gouache. Collectors in Asia have also taken note.
Mireille Derbré exhibits regularly in Biarritz. Website: mireillederbre.com