Léa Vandeveld paints freedom on seats at the Allianz Riviera

In her studio, Nice-based artist painter Léa Vandeveld transforms a stadium seat into a work of art, as part of a charity auction benefiting the OGC Nice Endowment Fund. A creator who has made recycling her signature.

Léa Vandeveld has a brush in hand when you push open the door. Before her, an object she has never had the opportunity to paint before: a seat from the Allianz Riviera from a stand of the OGC Nice stadium.

Twenty-four copies were entrusted to artists from the WholeStreet collective, who were behind the stadium’s customization the previous season. The objective was to give them a second life before they went to auction, yesterday, September 23, 2026, for the benefit of the club’s Endowment Fund. The evening raised a total of no less than 90,918 €.

For the 29-year-old artist, settled in Nice for ten years, the project resonates with her practice. Indeed, recovering an everyday, used object to give it a new artistic existence is her way of creating. “I recover used things and give them a second life by creating a work of art. That’s exactly what we’re doing”, she confides.

Léa Vandeveld has made a name for herself with her canvases created with makeup. Lipstick, mascara and eyeshadow worked and then fixed to become permanent.

A technique she has practiced since the age of 14 and which she considered for this seat, before abandoning it, as the fatty texture of makeup lends itself poorly to this support. She therefore deploys her other universe, that of acrylic.

Teamwork that “challenges enormously”

Accustomed to painting on canvas, the artist had to reinvent her gestures for this support. “It’s something new for me, another way of creating, in the gestures, in the understanding of my support”, she explains.

She recounts going through several stages, from hesitation to letting go, before asserting herself in her style. A face, her pictorial signature, will come to embellish the creation, surrounded by movements and colors conceived as an ode to freedom and the collective “an echo of the team spirit of football.”

From Bali to Nice, a touch of Picasso

As a child, she was already nicknamed “little Picasso”. Born in Paris, Léa Vandeveld grew up in Bali, where she was trained by her painting mentor, before settling in Nice ten years ago.

A city which, according to her, brought her “a lightness”, through the rhythm of life on the Côte d’Azur and through the artistic and sporting life.

Beyond the artistic aspect, the artist highlights her desire to associate each exhibition with a cause. She has already donated the proceeds from artwork sales to popular relief, to the Municipal Credit, to the SPCA and to the telethon.

Towards a cosmetics brand

Self-taught and proud of it, Léa Vandeveld says she has always created “without limits, without rules”. After collaborations with several major makeup brands, she now hopes to forge a substantive partnership with a ready-to-wear brand willing to undertake, with her, an artistic and eco-responsible approach in a cosmetics sector that she considers marked by waste.

The artist also aims to tackle very large formats, up to three meters, and to continue her international reach, having already exhibited in Dubai, Indonesia and New York.