Paul Delvaux

PAUL DELVAUX ( Belgium, 1897 - 1994).
"Sept Dialogues avec Paul Delvaux". 1971.
Etching on paper, copy 131/150.
Signed and numbered by hand.
Plate 1.
Measurements: 38 x 28 cm.

Delvaux's painting was consolidated in the representation of naked, idealized and static women, who look at the emptiness as if they were hypnotized, framed in oneiric environments. These settings often include references to classical architecture (a theme reinforced after his trip to Italy in 1938), railroad stations or deserted and mysterious landscapes. The eroticism in his work is latent, accentuated by his precise and dry, almost academic technique, which makes the juxtaposition of figures more disturbing. Sometimes these women are accompanied by skeletons or by men in bowler hats (possibly an alter ego of the artist) who stare impassively at them or ignore them. Motifs such as trains or Verne's scientists are recurrent.

Paul Delvaux was born in Antheit, province of Liège, on September 23, 1897, and lived until July 20, 1994 in Veurne. Between 1920 and 1924, he studied painting and architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels with Constant Montald, despite the initial disapproval of his parents, who preferred that he focus on architecture. His studies of music, Greek and Latin, together with his absorption of the fiction of Jules Verne and the poetry of Homer, left a deep imprint on his artistic imagination.

His early works, around 1920 to 1925, were mainly naturalistic landscapes, influenced initially by Impressionism and later by Flemish Expressionism (such as Constant Permeke and Gustave De Smet) and German Expressionism. However, a fundamental change occurred in the mid-thirties. After participating in the Minotaur exhibition in Brussels in 1934, and under the crucial influence of the metaphysical art of Giorgio de Chirico (whom he met in the late 1920s) and his compatriot René Magritte, Delvaux almost completely abandoned his primitive style, even going so far as to destroy much of that early work.

He then adopted a style known as magical realism or classical surrealism, to which he would remain faithful for the rest of his life. He himself acknowledged Chirico's influence as he found "the climate that had to develop, the climate of silent streets with shadows of people who cannot be seen." Although he was associated with the Belgian surrealist group, he never considered himself a surrealist in the strict sense, but an artist driven by an "intimate and privileged relationship with his childhood".

In the late 1950s, he produced a remarkable series of night scenes where the clarity of detail in moonlight creates a hallucinatory effect. His career also included monumental commissions, such as a mural for the Palais du Congrès in Brussels in 1959.

In 1965, he was appointed director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Recognition of his legacy materialized in 1982 with the opening of the Paul Delvaux Museum in St. Idesbaldo, Belgium. His work remains a testament to his particular vision, preserved in such important public collections as the MoMA, the Tate Gallery and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.