“I’m just starting to come down…” Toulouse artist Lionel Sabaté finalist for the Marcel-Duchamp prize

Surprised, Lionel Sabatté felt “overjoyed, super happy” at the announcement, on January 9 in Paris, of his presence in the list of four award-winning artists for the 25th edition of the Marcel-Duchamp Prize, endowed with 90 000 €. The Toulouse artist, based in the capital, finds himself in the spotlight thanks to this selection within one of the most important distinctions in the world of contemporary Art at a global level. “I’m just starting to come back down,” he says, around ten days later.

His mind now turns to the exhibition of the four award-winning artists – including him –, scheduled from September 2025 to February 2026 at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. “I am starting to think about my different possibilities,” explains Lionel Sabatté. “I want to highlight the most essential parts of my art, my matrix, namely painting and sculpture.” He will know on November 23 if he is named winner by the international jury of the Marcel-Duchamp Prize.

An art with dust

But the result doesn’t matter for this almost fifty-year-old: “The most important thing is to present myself in an exhibition within such an important institution.” And, in fact, Lionel Sabaté will thus be able to show as many people as possible his art, very focused on “nature, the living and our relationship to it”. Many followers and curious people will be able to discover his taste for “particular materials, such as dust and pozzolan, a volcanic powder” which he uses on the surface of certain paintings.

The artist, represented by the Ceysson & Bénétière gallery, follows in the footsteps of another artist from the region, the Mazamétain Abdelkader Benchamma, one of the winners of the previous edition of the Marcel-Duchamp prize. Both attended the Beaux-Arts in Paris at the same time, during the first half of the 2000s. “I really appreciate his work,” says Lionel Sabatté. “Very happy for him, I congratulated him last year and now he does the same.

Lionel Sabatté was born in Toulouse in 1975, and lived for ten years in Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne), “the town of Ingres and Bourdelle”, before following his family in a move to Reunion. “When I return to the Pink City, flashes of my childhood come back to me,” confides the artist. “I love this magnificent region.”

And, although he would very much like to see some of his works integrated into the collections of the Musée des Abattoirs, he is delighted at the idea of ​​starting a two-year residency in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie (Lot) in the coming weeks with a view to an exhibition in 2026. He will also present a “solo show” in Pouzilhac (Gard), from April. A way for Lionel Sabatté to remain linked to the territory, where his artistic instinct and vocation were born, and to savor the journey he has traveled.