The Surrealism Website
Jacques Resch(1945-)


Jacques Resch is a French born artist who lives and works in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, Africa.
He began painting as a child. At around three or four years of age, his mother entered his drawings in a contest where he won first prize. At seven years old, his mother enrolled him in art courses.
When Resch began looking to study at a college, he met Jean Raymond Bessil, an artist and art teacher, who advised him not to enter an art school, telling him that if his creative force was strong enough, than he did not need to take lessons. Taking Bessil’s advice, Resch went on to become a physics and chemistry teacher, while continuing to draw and paint. Resch first started to seriously exhibit his work in 1981, at the Salon D’Automne in Paris.
After his baccalaureate, passionate about aviation and with a degree in physics and chemistry, he relocated to Africa to teach, settling permanently in Burkina Faso in 1990. After teaching for twenty-seven years, he created the association Faso Livres intended to produce school books for students by publishing and distributing 100,000 books per year at cost price, which have been used by over three million Burkinabe students.
The vast majority of his over 200 paintings painted since 1971 were produced in Africa, but he exhibited for the first time in 1974 in Carnon then in 1979 in Montpellier, then at many galleries in France. For ten years he was exhibited in a large gallery in Paris dedicated to imaginary realism painters, which increased his reputation.
Influenced by artists such as Bosch, Breughel and Dali, Resch’s works draw on modern technology and world politics. Resch particularly admires Bosch, because Bosch ‘uses dreams to adventure into the interior of the human spirit. However, while Bosch depicted the temptations of man by the devil, Resch’s oeuvre addresses modern day problems that plague the world, such as pollution, poverty and war.
His work is also influenced by technology such as the television and internet which barrages people with images.