Vanessa Alice Bensimon, better known as Miss Van, was born in 1973 in Toulouse, France and is a graffiti and street artist now permanently based in Barcelona (SP). Miss Van began her career at the age of 20 painting on the streets of her hometown and from the earliest beginnings she inextricably links her research to the dimension of the feminine, defining her characters as special Muses with unique animal traits.
The artist is known for a technique close to both graffiti and the use of the brush, with the result of creations always beyond the clear boundaries of contemporary art.
Her beautiful women, surrounded by a suffused air and with a slightly dreamy and slit gaze, they are depicted in always different shapes and colors, able to invoke the widest variety of emotions and intimate fantasies that bring directly to a vintage atmosphere and full of natural and floral elements able to create the most sensual of the scenarios which is also thanks to the long and soft hair of the subjects portrayed.
Miss Van's elaborate and timeless compositions show an element at the same time raw and delicate, particularly evident in the unveiling of the bodies of the protagonists. In her work, it is possible to identify the strong influence of artists such as Frida Kahlo and Tamara De Lempicka, as well as the atmospheres close to vintage photographs, Gypsy costumes and cultural folklore. Her work masterfully combines the most tender femininity and the most disturbing fantasy, able easily to refer to Burlesque and to disturb and provoke its observer. The characters turn out to be so mysterious and extravagant, even desirable but often embodied in adult figures engaged in provocative poses and magnetic gazes.
Her suggestive iconography, made of pastel shades with but marked features, is consequently modeled on the basis of the artist's sensitivity and reflects the contemporary female condition in all its ambiguity.
