Linda Le Kinff

Linda Le Kinff is born in Paris on February 17 to Franco-Brazilian parents. Her father, a doctor specializing in tropical diseases at the Institut Pasteur, dies when Linda is only three years old.

Her mother remarries, but Linda only knows life at boarding school until she comes of age.

Enters Rophée, a private and select institution in Neuilly where music, art, language, and literature are taught.

Obtains her high school diploma, continues as a boarding student, and begins to study language and literature.

Enrolls at the Sorbonne. Self-publishes her first lithograph edition, “Le Masque.”

Undertakes the study of journalism for quicker entry into that field. Participates in reporting and writing – notably, architectural reviews. Works for the magazine Les ardoiserie`res d’Angers and at Paris Archi, which puts her in contact with architects and sculptors in the framework of the state-sponsored program 1%100 aux artistes. Specializes in writing about sculptors and their works in the city.

Travels to the Indies, Tibet, and Bhutan. Brings back an aesthetic vision that is overwhelming and innovative as well as notebooks of drawings and poems; further self discovery. Decides to become an artist.

Begins her apprenticeship in sculpture in Italy and begins to paint on canvas in classic mediums.

First personal exhibit in Pisa at the Galerie Macchi. Meets Henry Moore during his exhibition at the Belvedere in Florence. Numerous group exhibits.

Exhibits of diverse monumental sculptures in the Bubble House at the Paris fair; a totem at the Château de Gouvieu in Chantilly; and especially a play space named the TOTORES, a state commission for the city of Paris; then an exhibit at the Floral Park in the city of Vincennes and another at the “Espace Cartier.”

Takes up residence in Tuscany, Italy. Works in Massa Carrara. Interacts with artists Fiume, Leonore Fini, Chipola, Macchiari, and Mario Marini, which greatly influences and affirms her vocation. During this period, she
increases her drawing and painting, especially of landscapes. The museum in Certaldo asks her to illustrate Boccaccio’s Decameron. She subsequently creates a series of drawings, watercolors, and engravings using figures as her subject, a new theme that she will thereafter favor.

Internship in Austria where she begins painting on wood; period influenced by the painters Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Meets Giani Trapani, famous restorer, who worked with his team for 10 years to save the treasures and artistic masterpieces threatened by the floods in the Arno Valley in 1968; a passionate and enriching apprenticeship. Perfects her technique on wood with the Italian master, Macchario. He teaches her the art of glacis and several secrets of egg or casein-based preparations, a technique which goes back to the Renaissance, but which she feels is very adaptable to modern expression.

Travels to Japan; involves herself in Sumi art and works on Japanese papers. Meets two masters with different styles: Okamoto Taro, abstract painter; and Suijiama Yu, figurative painter, who crushes semiprecious stones for incorporation into his paintings.

At the Gourdon studio in Paris, she is working on her first lithograph when a visitor inadvertently catches his foot on her artist’s portfolio, helps her pick up her drawings, looks at them, is taken with them … a very long and fruitful collaboration follows. The visitor, Mr. Myles Cook, is director and discoverer of new talent for the publisher Christie’s of London. More than 100 Le Kinff prints will be published and there will be numerous exhibits in Japan, England, Australia and the United States over a period of 12 years.

Discovers Morocco, which strongly influences her style on canvas, wood, paper, and sculpture. Tries her hand at abstract landscape. Personal exhibits under the patronage of the French Ministry of Culture in Casablanca, Rabat,
Marrakech, Fez. Invitation to the Palais Royal, exhibits at the residence of S.A.S. Lalla Lamina for several consecutive years. Meets the famous abstract Moroccan painter, Fadiba.

Begins work with collage.

Awarded a State Commission by the Imprimerie Nationale, engraved plates for the tri-centennial of the Château of Versailles. Illustrates the short stories of Maupassant and Colette.

Large exhibit in Oslo, Norway. Meets Jacques, her husband of Jewish-Ukrainian origin at a Chagall exhibition.

Birth of her son, Peter.

Birth of her daughter, Natacha.

Awarded a State Commission by then-Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, a series of engravings of the French revolution to celebrate the bicentennial (1789-1989).

Exhibitions:
Allemagne, Bonn, Germany
Allen Augustine Gallery, Lake Tahoe, Nevada
Galerie François et Gontier, Lille, France

Exhibitions:
“Au temps qui passe,” Geneva Galerie la Spiralem Vevey, Switzerland
Galerie Much, Nantes, France

In a propitious encounter, meets Mr. Albert Scaglione, prestigious founder of Park West Gallery®, also well known in French artistic circles. This meeting impacts not only her career, which will start to accelerate quickly, but also her artistic style, which now develops more dynamism, moving from lithography of a certain classicism to serigraphy and a more daring modernism.

Selected by the French government as the official artist for the FIFA World Cup. She creates a painting in honor of France’s World Cup victory that is then minted as a commemorative medallion by Monnaie de Paris (the French Mint) by decree of the Ministere des Finances (the French Ministry of Finance). Both painting and coin are
then exhibited in Lens, Lille, Marseille, Montpellier, Paris, Saint-Denis, and Toulouse.

Le Kinff exhibits everywhere from United States to Mexico to France to Japan.

Begins a series of frescoes about different themes such as: Life, music (Detroit musicians), the circus, and the Kentucky Derby.

Le Kinff is invited to be an official artist for the Kentucky Derby. She is the first French artist to receive this honor.

Inspired by Tahitian culture during her travels.