Pascal Russi (PRussi) was born in 1958 in the Valais mountains of Switzerland and lives in Sierre. Trained as a pastry chef, he came to painting in his late twenties after a health challenge and has no formal art education. He has now painted for nearly forty years. He works without a plan or a routine. Each canvas begins from the mood of the day and he paints at night as willingly as in daylight. His early work used gouache he later turned to oil and even tar and today he works mainly in acrylic. Nature and the state of the world continue to feed his imagery. He names Miró, Pollock, Nicolas de Staël and Dalí among the artists he admires, and he is wary of style labels, preferring to paint and let others do the classifying. His work has received awards in New York, Madrid, Florence and Milan, including the MADS Critics Award in 2019 for three canvases from the series Les Carafes. Since his first exhibition in 1998, he has shown in Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, China, Canada and the United States, in galleries as well as in public spaces such as the Carrousel du Louvre, Times Square and metro stations in several cities. In 2026, he was invited by an Italian foundation to present large-format works at the Venice Biennale. “Dans chaque situation il y a du positif ! Cherche-le et va de l’avant, sinon demain tu seras toujours là… Et tu pourras t’en prendre qu’à toi même!” - PRussi.