At Solari, we love to celebrate creativity of all kinds. We recently discovered the masterful puppetry and street theater of Raphaël Gromy, one of four founding members of the humorously named French theatrical company Remue Poils (“Ruffling Hair”) based in Quimper, Brittany.

In the remarkable display of puppetry art that captured our attention (see here and here), Gromy’s marionette “Bob”—wearing a classic Breton striped shirt and glasses and skillfully wielding a paintbrush—creates a real portrait on canvas. For anyone who has ever tried to maneuver a marionette, Bob’s (and Gromy’s) dexterity and artistic creations are simply astonishing.

A social media post about Gromy, commenting on how human culture is kept alive, observed that “Some traditions survive … because someone continues showing up to practice them.”

Gromy co-founded Remue Poils with Romi J. Flipo, Maria Vial, and Mariana Céspedes Boric, with an artistic vision that combines marionettes, physical theater, masks, clowning, poetry, music, and even book creation. As another admirer comments, “Creating art with marionettes becomes something truly magical when it turns into storytelling, movement, emotion, and creativity all at once.”