Ella et Pitr

Ella & Pitr
Occupation	Artist
Years active	2007–present

Ella & Pitr are two French artists who have been working together since 2007. Their studio is located in Saint-Étienne.

They are known for their large-scale drawings on horizontal surfaces spanning several thousand square meters in urban spaces.

Biography

Ella & Pitr, born in 1984 and 1981 respectively, come from the world of performing arts and graffiti. They began collaborating in 2007, focusing on collage. They would illegally enter 4 x 3 meter advertising spaces or use the gaps in urban topology. In 2009, they illegally integrated their work into the "Born in the Streets" exhibition at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art. This caught the attention of Thomas Schmitt, who invited them to participate in Le Mur. They were the first to break out of the established frame.

In 2012, the duo started incorporating anamorphosis into their work. In 2013, they collaborated with the Comédie de Saint-Étienne to create a series of visuals showcasing their anamorphic work.

It was in 2013 that Ella & Pitr began painting their "Sleeping Giants" in various countries. The sizes of these works range from 500 to 25,000 square meters.

They helped create the association Le M.U.R de Saint-Étienne and have been its program directors to this day.

In 2015, during the NuArt Festival in Norway, they created the world's largest figurative roof artwork, "Lilith & Olaf," covering 21,000 square meters, although it was later surpassed by "What's the Weather Tomorrow."

In 2016, they painted on the grass of the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard in Saint-Étienne and produced a work in the heart of La Défense, Paris, during Urban Week.

In June 2019, they painted the largest urban artwork in the world on the roof of Paris' Parc Expo, covering 25,000 square meters. "What's the Weather Tomorrow" depicts a grandmother in front of traffic with a plastic bag flying over her head, with the artwork notably traversed by the highway.

They have gradually developed a "collection of disappearances," documenting the erasure of their works through Google Maps or by deliberately destroying them, such as in their "Blast" series, where their works are painted in stone quarries and later demolished by explosions, captured via drones.

Vision

Ella & Pitr are considered part of the urban art movement, using the city as their playground and promoting the idea that public space belongs to everyone. Their work, informed by the geographical and social context of the locations, aims to challenge complacency.

Exhibitions

• M.U.R Paris, 2010
• "The One Who Stole the Stars to Put Them in His Soup," solo exhibition, Galerie Le Feuvre, 2012
• M.U.R XIII, Paris, 2012
• Solo exhibitions at Galerie Le Feuvre, Paris (2013, 2015, 2017, 2018)
• Solo exhibition at Vertical Gallery, Chicago, 2016
• Retrospective at Galerie Le Feuvre, Paris, 2018
• Solo exhibitions at Galerie Le Feuvre & Roze (2020, 2022)

Publications

• "The Old Lady Who Was Part of the Furniture," 2011
• "The One Who Stole the Stars to Put Them in His Soup," 2012
• "Turn Over Your Soup," 2013
• "Like Ants," 2017
• "The Plan on the Sticker," 2020
• "Big Like This," 2021

Films

• "Day by Day Forever," short film by Ella & Pitr, directed by Clément Fessy
• "Ink Kiss," feature film by Françoise Romand with Ella & Pitr