From 17 October 2025 to 8 February 2026, the Petit Palais – Museum of Fine Arts of the City of Paris is dedicating a major exhibition to the painter Bilal Hamdad.
Entitled Paname, this presentation is the first and most ambitious museum exhibition dedicated to the artist.
Bringing together some twenty paintings, including several previously unseen works, the exhibition offers a sensitive immersion into today’s Paris, in dialogue with the museum’s permanent collections.
Bilal Hamdad, painter of today’s Paris
Born in 1987 in Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria, Bilal Hamdad first trained in his native country before continuing his artistic studies in Algiers, then in France, in Bourges and at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he graduated in 2018.
He quickly developed a unique pictorial style, centred on large figurative compositions inspired by contemporary urban scenes.
Using photographs taken on the spot, the artist constructs very large-format paintings characterised by tight framing, a strong presence of bodies and masterful chiaroscuro.
His works depict a Paris that is both dense and silent, populated by solitary figures absorbed in their own trajectories.
Paintings inspired by art history
Bilal Hamdad’s work engages in a conscious dialogue with the great masters of Western painting.
Caravaggio, Rubens, Velázquez, Degas, Manet, Courbet and Hopper all influence his pictorial thinking.
This connection was further strengthened during his residency at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid, where he studied the collections of the Prado Museum in depth.
François Schneider Foundation.© François Schneider Foundation – Wattwiller, photo SteeveConstanty ©Adagp, Paris, 2025
Far from quotation or imitation, the artist transposes these legacies into a resolutely contemporary style, affirming the relevance of figurative painting today, in an era of visual saturation.
Paname, a dialogue between past and present
With Paname, Bilal Hamdad takes over the Petit Palais as a space for resonance. A regular visitor to the museum, he approaches its collections as a living memory with which to engage in dialogue.
The exhibition brings scenes of the Paris metro, markets, cafés, and streets into the heritage rooms.
The monumental work Paname, inspired by Léon Lhermitte’s painting Les Halles de Paris, which is kept at the museum, embodies this dialogue.
It depicts a market at the exit of the metro, fragmented by the movement of bodies and light, offering a vision of contemporary Paris that is both documentary and poetic.
Urban solitude as a central theme
In Bilal Hamdad’s paintings, the crowd never obscures the individual. The characters often appear absorbed, silent, as if suspended in the flow of the city. This focus on urban solitude gives his work a universal dimension.
François Schneider Foundation © François Schneider Foundation – Wattwiller, photo Steeve Constanty © Adagp, Paris, 2025
Through a subtle interplay of light and composition, the artist transforms ordinary scenes into meditative images. Everyday life thus becomes a place for reflection on presence, time, and the human condition.
See also :
- Jean-Baptiste Greuze at the Petit Palais: an exhibition event
- Pekka Halonen at the Petit Palais: an immersion into the soul of Finland
- Don’t miss the 3 key exhibitions of the Petit Palais
FAQ
The Paname exhibition runs from October 17, 2025, to February 8, 2026, at the Petit Palais in Paris.
t is being held at the Petit Palais, the City of Paris’s fine arts museum, located on Avenue Winston-Churchill.
Bilal Hamdad is a contemporary painter born in 1987, trained in Algeria and France, a graduate of the Beaux-Arts in Paris, and renowned for his Parisian urban scenes.
The exhibition brings together some twenty paintings, including previously unseen works, depicting scenes of contemporary Parisian life in dialogue with art history.
Yes, the exhibition is free and open to the public, like all exhibitions at the Petit Palais.