A French artist with Italian roots, Gina Pane (1935, Biarritz - 1990, Paris) became known in the 1970s with a series of "actions" involving her own body. Championed by the critic François Pluchart, she was immediately recognised as one of France´s major proponents of body art, alongside Michel Journiac. In addition to these actions, however, Pane developed a body of work that is both extremely varied and highly coherent. Believing, like her contemporary Joseph Beuys, that the artist can change society, she sought constantly to act on the beholder in order to transform their relation to the world. Her paintings, sculptures, actions, photographs and installations all strove to create a new language and thus enable closer communication with nature, the other and the divine.