Thierry Esther was born on the island of La Réunion. He was eight when his family moved to mainland France — his first time on French soil was a Boeing landing on the tarmac at Orly. His mother, Valentine, a fashion designer back on the island, had to start over as a cleaning lady and never returned to her trade. Yet she saw her son's gift early, and took him whenever she could to museums, exhibitions and galleries.
His work unfolds in series. Clean Art, where he builds up and strips down his canvases using household products. Painting Music Dust, born of his passion for Maria Callas and the great operas. Then White Journey through Japan, a crossing of the country from 1945 to the present — between the memory of the atomic bomb and the beauty that grows back. Selected by the French Senate, the series was shown in 2023 at the Pavillon Davioud, in the Jardin du Luxembourg; planned for 2020, it had been postponed by the pandemic.
He is now working on Kaf Noir, a series about slavery on La Réunion and what remains of it in the memory of a descendant. Thierry Esther is himself descended from a family of enslaved people from the island, the Calogine. The exhibition is planned for autumn 2027.
In 2009, on the occasion of his exhibition at the Jardin du Luxembourg, the critic Jennifer Specht wrote that his painting "hits like a Basquiat" — the same urgency, the same freedom of gesture, the same reference to his origins.