David Lynch

He received 42 cinema awards, including the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989 and the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival in 2006. His works, which combined cinema, photography, painting, and music, explored the depths of the subconscious and the grey areas of the human soul, themes he had already explored as a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 2005, he founded the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, based on the practice of transcendental meditation.

Thanks to a close working relationship that spanned several decades of creation, the Fondation Cartier was able to explore the extent of the artwork he produced by collecting his Binders, his photographs, and numerous drawings. His solo exhibition, David Lynch, The Air is on Fire, unveiled a vast selection of his artwork for the first time in 2007. Les Habitants (2014) and Les Citoyens (2021, Triennale Milano) revealed the photographic series Nudes and an installation by Argentinian artist Guillermo Kuitca based on a set design by Lynch, including a sound piece jointly created with Patti Smith. Mondo Reale (2019, Triennale Milano) presented, in particular, What Did Jack Do? (2017), a film acquired by the Fondation Cartier, but also a daily Weather Report, streaming live from his home in Los Angeles. Lynch also participated in Mathématiques, un Dépaysement Soudain (2011) for which he created multimedia environments, and designed works with unused gems from the Maison Cartier within the framework of the Artist meets Artisan programme (2012).