Genieve Figgis

Genieve Figgis (born 1972 in Dublin) is an Irish painter known for her figurative paintings in bright colours, with an elegant and unsettling atmosphere. She lives and works in County Wicklow, south of Dublin.

Genieve Figgis obtained a bachelor's degree in fine art at Gorey School of Art, in County Wexford, in 2006. She went on to the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, where she completed a master's degree in 2012. In the early 2010s, she posted her paintings on Twitter. The American artist Richard Prince noticed them, and Harper's exhibited her in 2014 in East Hampton, New York.

Almine Rech has represented her since 2015 and has shown her work in Brussels, London, New York, Paris and Shanghai, then in Venice in 2024 and Monaco in 2026. In 2019, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin included her in the group exhibition "Desire". The M Woods Museum in Beijing devoted "Drama Party" to her in 2023. Her paintings are in the collections of the Bass Museum of Art and the Pérez Art Museum Miami, as well as the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago.

Inspired by art history and aristocratic portraiture, which she crosses with popular culture, Genieve Figgis reinterprets classical scenes in a spontaneous, expressive style in which forms seem to dissolve and transform. She applies acrylic in thick layers and lets it run across the canvas. Her drawing-room and ballroom scenes borrow from Fragonard, Boucher, Goya and Manet.