Françoise Pétrovitch’s “Tenir” at Semiose, Paris: Adolescence, Clay and the Art of Holding On

To hold a pose, to hold a pot, to hold on through the awkward years between childhood and adulthood: the French verb tenir carries all of these. It is also the title of Françoise Pétrovitch’s new solo exhibition “Tenir” at Galerie Semiose in Paris, on view from 7 November to 23 December 2026 — and for followers of the artist, the word will ring a bell.

A title she has used before

Pétrovitch’s own CV lists “Tenir” as the title of her 2018 exhibition in the Pavillon de verre at the Louvre-Lens. Returning to a title eight years later is less a repetition than a statement of method: her art keeps circling the same few states — adolescence, absence, metamorphosis — and finds something new in them each time. The Semiose text puts it plainly: the show “nous entraîne de nouveau dans le royaume de la transformation”, drawing us once more into the realm of transformation.

Who is Françoise Pétrovitch?

Born in 1964, Pétrovitch lives and works in Verneuil-sur-Avre, Normandy. She trained at the École normale supérieure de Cachan and passed the agrégation in visual arts in 1986, a route that long combined her studio practice with teaching. Her recognition in France is now institutional at the highest level: she was made a Chevalière of the Légion d’honneur in 2022 and elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, in its printmaking and drawing section, in 2025.

Recent museum exhibitions trace her range: “Soleil” at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris and “De l’Absence” at the Musée Jenisch in Vevey (both 2025), “Aimer. Rompre” at the Musée de la Vie romantique (2023), “Derrière les paupières” at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (2022), and 2026 projects at the Musée Ingres Bourdelle in Montauban and the Cité internationale de la tapisserie in Aubusson. Her work is held by the Centre Pompidou, the BnF, MAC VAL, Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, among many others.

What to expect in the gallery

According to the exhibition text, ceramics and paintings are distributed evenly through the whole of Semiose, answering and overlapping one another. In places, motifs from the paintings migrate onto the sculptures, so a glazed surface becomes another support for the brush. Two threads run through the show:

• Adolescence, described as a territory of liminality and metamorphosis — a recurring subject for Pétrovitch, whose young figures often appear caught mid-change, eyes lowered or faces dissolving.
• The ceramic process, presented as a way of giving physical form to thought in clay — the material registers every pressure of the hand, and is literally transformed by fire.

Gallery listings also point to lines of hair, a face that slips away, and the gesture of holding itself as central images. Anyone who knows her ink-wash works — fast, fluid and luminous — will recognise how easily that language transfers to ceramic glaze.

Semiose and its long relationship with the artist

Semiose was founded in 2007 in Paris’s 20th arrondissement and moved to rue Quincampoix in the Marais in 2011, a short walk from the Centre Pompidou. Pétrovitch is one of its core artists: earlier in 2026 the gallery staged “Très exactement”, her collaboration with the novelist Marie Darrieussecq, after previous solo presentations including “Dans mes mains” (2024). “Tenir” is therefore the second Pétrovitch exhibition at Semiose this year — a sign of the gallery’s confidence in a new body of work.

Why it matters

For painters, “Tenir” is a rare chance to see one artist move the same motifs across two very different disciplines and let each medium change the image. For collectors, it brings together paintings and ceramics by an artist whose work sits in France’s major public collections and who now holds a seat at the Académie — a combination of critical and institutional standing that few living French painters share. And for anyone in Paris in December, it is a quiet, concentrated show in the heart of the Marais gallery district.

Practical information

Semiose, 44 rue Quincampoix, 75004 Paris. 7 November – 23 December 2026. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am–7pm, and by appointment; phone +33 (0)9 79 26 16 38, email [email protected]. The gallery has not published a vernissage time, so please check with Semiose. See our Tenir listing, the Semiose exhibition programme, and our hub of Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.