True to form, de Chazal flirted with different styles, never allowing himself to be tied down by a single school. His painting, like his writing, is effusive; insatiable, he painted day and night, infusing his creations with anthropomorphism, with exuberance and, to put it simply, an overwhelming sense of life. Did he have sufficient time to digest his thoughts?“ People often think that( de Chazal’ s) paintings are naive. But that’ s a mistake. His works are very composed and thoughtful yet retain a sense of spontaneity: he took the time to let his ideas settle before committing them to paper,” clarifies Emmanuel Richon, curator of the Blue Penny Museum.
For Richon, de Chazal invites happiness into his works through the use of saturated colours and sometimes provocative incongruities that distill the poet’ s boundless love for his island.“ We need to discover and rediscover Malcolm de Chazal. His extraordinary, dreamlike approach to painting always transports us to somewhere new,” Robert Furlong concludes. Although often misunderstood, de Chazal’ s creative prowess continues to be celebrated.
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Celebrated by the French Surrealists, for whom his luminous writing shed a captivating light on the painful postwar period, Malcolm de Chazal broke forever from Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’ s romantic concept of Mauritius. A true ecophilosopher, his love of Nature – paired with the love of truth – pours from his writing, going far beyond a continuous re-reading of his country.
“ After Petrusmok, de Chazal found himself somewhat adrift in the literary world.” This diversion from the literary path led him briefly to the world of theatre, but ended with his discovery of painting.“ Here, de Chazal found what he had been looking for for years; his writing was pictorial, allowed him to take his thoughts even further,” Robert Furlong tells us.
From September 2024 to January 2025, a dedicated exhibition displayed 160 of Malcolm de Chazal’ s paintings at La Halle Saint-Pierre in Paris. In March 2025, another exhibition followed, this time at the Blue Penny Museum in Mauritius, where some 40 of his works were shown until early June, drawn from the collections of the Mauritius Commercial Bank, the Beachcomber Group and private individuals.“ This initiative not only enables us to highlight one of the country’ s most important artists, it also fits in with our philosophy of promoting local culture,” says Charlotte d’ Hotman, Arts & Culture Manager at the MCB.
Of one thing we can be certain: with his flamboyant and delightfully nonconformist personality, Malcolm de Chazal will remain a subject of mystery and fascination for many years to come!
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