Paul Delvaux
Encyclopedia
Paul Delvaux was a Belgian
painter
, associated with Surrealism
, famous for his paintings of female nudes.
, the son of a lawyer. The young Delvaux took music lessons, studied Greek and Latin, and absorbed the fiction of Jules Verne
and the poetry of Homer
. All of his work was to be influenced by these readings, starting with his earliest drawings showing mythological scenes. He studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
in Brussels
, albeit in the architecture department owing to his parents' disapproval of his ambition to be a painter. Nevertheless, he pursued his goal, attending painting classes taught by Constant Montald
and Jean Delville
. The painters Frans Courtens and Alfred Bastien
also encouraged Delvaux, whose works from this period were primarily naturalistic landscape
s. He completed some 80 paintings between 1920 and 1925, which was the year of his first solo exhibition.
Delvaux's paintings of the late 1920s and early 1930s, which feature nudes in landscapes, are strongly influenced by such Flemish Expressionists
as Constant Permeke
and Gustave De Smet
. A change of style around 1933 reflects the influence of the metaphysical art
of Giorgio de Chirico
, which he had first encountered in 1926 or 1927. In the early 1930s Delvaux found further inspiration in visits to the Brussels Fair, where the Spitzner Museum, a museum of medical curiosities, maintained a booth in which skeletons and a mechanical Venus
figure were displayed in a window with red velvet curtains. This spectacle captivated Delvaux, supplying him with motifs
that would appear throughout his subsequent work. In the mid-1930s he also began to adopt some of the motifs of his fellow Belgian René Magritte
, as well as that painter's deadpan style in rendering the most unexpected juxtapositions of otherwise ordinary objects.
Delvaux acknowledged his influences, saying of de Chirico, "with him I realized what was possible, the climate that had to be developed, the climate of silent streets with shadows of people who can't be seen, I've never asked myself if it's surrealist or not." Although Delvaux associated for a period with the Belgian surrealist group, he did not consider himself "a Surrealist in the scholastic sense of the word." As Marc Rombaut has written of the artist: "Delvaux ... always maintained an intimate and privileged relationship to his childhood, which is the underlying motivation for his work and always manages to surface there. This 'childhood,' existing within him, led him to the poetic dimension in art."
The paintings Delvaux became famous for usually feature numbers of nude women who stare as if hypnotized, gesturing mysteriously, sometimes reclining incongruously in a train station or wandering through classical buildings. Sometimes they are accompanied by skeletons, men in bowler hats, or puzzled scientists drawn from the stories of Jules Verne. Delvaux would repeat variations on these themes for the rest of his long life, although some departures can be noted. Among them are his paintings of 1945-47, rendered in a flattened style with distorted and forced perspective
effects, and the series of crucifixions and deposition scenes enacted by skeletons, painted in the 1950s.
In the late 1950s he produced a number of night scenes in which trains are observed by a little girl seen from behind. These compositions contain nothing overtly surrealistic, yet the clarity of moonlit detail is hallucinatory in effect. Trains had always been a subject of special interest to Delvaux, who never forgot the wonder he felt as a small child at the sight of the first electric trams in Brussels.
In 1959 he executed a mural at the Palais des Congrès in Brussels, one of several large scale decorative commissions Delvaux undertook. He was named director of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
in 1965. In 1982 the Paul Delvaux Museum opened in Saint-Idesbald
. Delvaux died in Veurne
in 1994.
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, associated with Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, famous for his paintings of female nudes.
Biography
Delvaux was born in Antheit in the Belgian province of LiègeLiège (province)
Liège is the easternmost province of Belgium and belongs to the Walloon Region. It is an area of French and German ethnicity. It borders on the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and in Belgium the provinces of Luxembourg, Namur, Walloon Brabant , and those of Flemish Brabant and Limburg . Its...
, the son of a lawyer. The young Delvaux took music lessons, studied Greek and Latin, and absorbed the fiction of Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
and the poetry of Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
. All of his work was to be influenced by these readings, starting with his earliest drawings showing mythological scenes. He studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
The Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels is an art school, founded in 1711.The faculty and alumni of ARBA include some of the most famous names in Belgian painting, sculpture, and architecture: James Ensor, Rene Magritte, and Paul Delvaux...
in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, albeit in the architecture department owing to his parents' disapproval of his ambition to be a painter. Nevertheless, he pursued his goal, attending painting classes taught by Constant Montald
Constant Montald
Constant Montald was a Belgian painter, muralist, sculptor, and teacher.Montald trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, then lived and studied briefly in Paris with fellow artist Henri Privat-Livemont at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts...
and Jean Delville
Jean Delville
Jean Delville was a Belgian symbolist painter, writer, and occultist. In 1896, he founded the Salon d’Art Idealiste, which is considered the Belgian equivalent to the Parisian Rose & Cross Salon and the Pre-Raphaelite movement in London.-Quotes:-Delville's background:During the last decades of...
. The painters Frans Courtens and Alfred Bastien
Alfred Bastien
Alfred Théodore Joseph Bastien was a Belgian artist, academic and soldier.He attended the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Ghent, where he studied with Jean Delvin. He then enrolled in the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he studied with Jean-François Portaels. He won the Prix...
also encouraged Delvaux, whose works from this period were primarily naturalistic landscape
Landscape art
Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...
s. He completed some 80 paintings between 1920 and 1925, which was the year of his first solo exhibition.
Delvaux's paintings of the late 1920s and early 1930s, which feature nudes in landscapes, are strongly influenced by such Flemish Expressionists
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
as Constant Permeke
Constant Permeke
Constant Permeke was a Belgian painter and sculptor who is considered the leading figure of Flemish expressionism.Permeke was born in Antwerp but when he was six years old the family moved to Ostend, where his father became curator of the Municipal Museum of Arts. Permeke went to school in Bruges...
and Gustave De Smet
Gustave De Smet
Gustave De Smet was a Belgian expressionist painter.Having first adopted the "luminist" style of Emile Claus, he came under the influence of expressionism and cubism during World War I....
. A change of style around 1933 reflects the influence of the metaphysical art
Metaphysical art
Metaphysical art , style of painting that flourished mainly between 1911 and 1920 in the works of the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began with Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contrasts of light and shadow often had a vaguely threatening, mysterious quality...
of Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico was a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Italian painter born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the scuola metafisica art movement...
, which he had first encountered in 1926 or 1927. In the early 1930s Delvaux found further inspiration in visits to the Brussels Fair, where the Spitzner Museum, a museum of medical curiosities, maintained a booth in which skeletons and a mechanical Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
figure were displayed in a window with red velvet curtains. This spectacle captivated Delvaux, supplying him with motifs
Motif (art)
In art, a motif is an element of a pattern, an image or part of one, or a theme. A motif may be repeated in a design or composition, often many times, or may just occur once in a work. A motif may be an element in the iconography of a particular subject or type of subject that is seen in other...
that would appear throughout his subsequent work. In the mid-1930s he also began to adopt some of the motifs of his fellow Belgian René Magritte
René Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte[p] was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images...
, as well as that painter's deadpan style in rendering the most unexpected juxtapositions of otherwise ordinary objects.
Delvaux acknowledged his influences, saying of de Chirico, "with him I realized what was possible, the climate that had to be developed, the climate of silent streets with shadows of people who can't be seen, I've never asked myself if it's surrealist or not." Although Delvaux associated for a period with the Belgian surrealist group, he did not consider himself "a Surrealist in the scholastic sense of the word." As Marc Rombaut has written of the artist: "Delvaux ... always maintained an intimate and privileged relationship to his childhood, which is the underlying motivation for his work and always manages to surface there. This 'childhood,' existing within him, led him to the poetic dimension in art."
The paintings Delvaux became famous for usually feature numbers of nude women who stare as if hypnotized, gesturing mysteriously, sometimes reclining incongruously in a train station or wandering through classical buildings. Sometimes they are accompanied by skeletons, men in bowler hats, or puzzled scientists drawn from the stories of Jules Verne. Delvaux would repeat variations on these themes for the rest of his long life, although some departures can be noted. Among them are his paintings of 1945-47, rendered in a flattened style with distorted and forced perspective
Perspective (graphical)
Perspective in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface , of an image as it is seen by the eye...
effects, and the series of crucifixions and deposition scenes enacted by skeletons, painted in the 1950s.
In the late 1950s he produced a number of night scenes in which trains are observed by a little girl seen from behind. These compositions contain nothing overtly surrealistic, yet the clarity of moonlit detail is hallucinatory in effect. Trains had always been a subject of special interest to Delvaux, who never forgot the wonder he felt as a small child at the sight of the first electric trams in Brussels.
In 1959 he executed a mural at the Palais des Congrès in Brussels, one of several large scale decorative commissions Delvaux undertook. He was named director of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
The Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels is an art school, founded in 1711.The faculty and alumni of ARBA include some of the most famous names in Belgian painting, sculpture, and architecture: James Ensor, Rene Magritte, and Paul Delvaux...
in 1965. In 1982 the Paul Delvaux Museum opened in Saint-Idesbald
Saint-Idesbald
Saint-Idesbald is a hamlet, part of Koksijde, which also includes Oostduinkerke. Its name refers to Idesbald, a 12th century abbot of the Abbey of Ten Duinen....
. Delvaux died in Veurne
Veurne
Veurne is a city and municipality in the Belgian province of West Flanders. The municipality comprises the town of Veurne proper and the settlements of Avekapelle, Booitshoeke, Bulskamp, De Moeren, Eggewaartskapelle, Houtem, Steenkerke, Vinkem, Wulveringem, and Zoutenaaie.-Origins in the 15th...
in 1994.