Agnès Varda was born in Brussels in 1928 and died in 2019 in Paris, France.

After obtaining her high school diploma, Agnès Varda took evening classes in photography. She was also a free auditor at the Sorbonne and the Ecole du Louvre. She worked as a photographer at the Festival d’Avignon, then at the T.N.P. directed by Jean Vilar. In 1954, she wrote, directed and produced her first feature film, La Pointe courte. Cléo de 5 à 7 (1961) was unanimously acclaimed. She then alternated between short and feature films, documentaries and fiction, including Le Bonheur (1964, Silver Bear at Berlin), Sans toit ni loi (1985, Golden Lion at Venice), Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (2000), Les Plages d’Agnès (César 2009), Visages Villages co-directed with artist JR (2017, selected for the 2018 Oscars).

In 2003, she took part in the Venice Art Biennale with her exhibition Patatutopia. She subsequently presented several solo exhibitions: in 2006, L’Île et Elle at the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain (Paris, France); in 2009, La Mer… Etsetera at Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain Languedoc-Roussillon (Sète, France); in 2012 Y’a pas que la mer at Musée Paul Valéry (Sète, France), Plages et pages chinoises at CAFA Museum (Beijing, China); in 2013, Agnès Varda in Californialand at LACMA (Los Angeles, USA); in 2015, Agnès Varda: Photographes get moving (potatoes and shells, too) at the Logan Center (Chicago, USA); in 2016, is presented Varda/Cuba at the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), Patates & Compagnie at the Musée d’Ixelles (Brussels, Belgium); in 2017, Varda/Cuba at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba (Havana).

In 2015, she was awarded the Palme d’Or d’honneur at the Cannes Film Festival, and in 2017, the Oscar d’honneur, for her body of work.

Agnès Varda’s work can be found in numerous international collections: Centre d’Art de Chamarande (France), Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain (France), FRAC Alsace (France), MoMA (USA), CNAP (France), MAC/VAL (France), Musée Paul Valéry (France), CAFA Art Museum (China), Institut Culturel Bernard Magrez (France), LACMA (USA).

Agnès Varda has been represented by Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels, since 2010.