The most famous myth about the birth of painting is probably that of Pliny the Elder, who recounts in his Natural History in 74 AD the story of “the daughter of Dibutade”. She drew the shadow of her lover in charcoal on the wall of her house before he left for a long journey, capturing his silhouette to give his presence the illusion of eternity. This woman, whose first name Pliny neglects to give, would be the first painter in history. Callirrhoé de Sicyone, her actual name, made painting an antidote to disappearance, and invented an art whose necessity is continually confirmed today. It is to this woman that we owe the gesture of form we give to the impossibility of forgetting. Callirrhoé de Sicyone thus made a way to offer ultimate attention, a last light to an image before it disappears, this famous “feeling of light” of which the poet Etel Adnan speaks.

– Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel