Marie Darrieussecq, Françoise Petrovitch - Precisely

Marie Darrieussecq, winner of the Medicis prize, has written a short story inspired by the work of Françoise Pétrovitch. In addition to nods to her iconography—birds, isolated landscapes and absent figures—the writer captures the melancholy and languor of the painter’s works in her own words.

In return, in a rewarding dialog with the short story dedicated to her by Marie Darrieussecq, Françoise Pétrovitch has created a series of ink washes on paper. The words of the writer enter into conversation with the images of the painter.

Their imaginations resonate, infiltrating each other like the ink that infuses the halos that surround the figures and silent landscapes they have invented together. These drawings, accompanied by the author’s short story, feature in the artist’s book, Très exactement.

Excerpt from Marie Darrieussecq’s text Très exactement pour Françoise Pétrovitch [Quite precisely for Françoise Pétrovitch]:

“He had gone travelling. He had flown over the edge of the city, above the forests. But the borders were closed now, and he could no longer come back. He regularly gave news. And then, less regularly.

In her timetable, it became a gap. Increasingly more gaps between the messages. And in the evening, in their house, she no longer looked towards the city, she always looked towards the forest.

At the foot of the bed, he had left a book by Pierre Reverdy, that she opened at random, and it was as if he was talking to her.”

For quite some time now, the creative works of these two women have crossed each other’s paths. One illustrating the other’s drawings with prose, and vice versa: book covers embellished with watercolor washes.
Their images and texts interact in a fruitful dialog, with the two artists sharing a mutual admiration that brings them ever closer together.

The publication of this book will concur with an exhibition of Françoise Pétrovitch’s drawings in Semiose Gallery, Paris (February 7 - March 7, 2026).