Robert Detheux (1932-2010) - Portrait de la lionne – 2008

Robert Detheux (1932-2010) Portrait of the Lioness – 2008 Artist: Robert Detheux (Brussels, 1932 – Tournai, 2010) Title of the work: Portrait of the lioness Date: 2008 Signature: Signed and dated “Detheux 2008” at bottom left. Title inscribed at bottom right. Technique: Mixed media on paper. Grey wash, pencil, white highlights and black traces. The figure is barely drawn; the background is largely worked with washes and rubbing. Spectral and airy material. Dimensions: 54.5 × 40 cm Condition: Very good overall condition. The material is held, the washes are clear, the signature and title legible. Atelier paper marked by the handling, some traces of handling on the margin, without any damage to the figure. Sold unframed. Provenance: Artist’s studio fund (acquired directly). Description: Work from 2008. Detheux was seventy-six years old. The drawing belongs fully to the final period: spectral portraits, apparitions, creatures. The figure is almost absent. A few lines, a gray volume, a vertical black spot, white highlights. One can guess a head, a muzzle, an animal presence. The title states it: this is a portrait of the lioness. But the lioness is not shown. She appears, barely, in the wash. The background, largely covered with gray and white, depicts no place. It is the figure itself. The lines are rare, the washes dominate. We are in Belgian surrealism of Detheux’s very latest period: the portrait has become an appearance, the animal a specter, the drawing a material form. Signed, titled, dated, of good format and with rare material in the collection: a significant piece from the 2008 years for lovers of drawing and Belgian mixed media who are sensitive to spectral figures and apparitions. Artist’s Biography: Born in Brussels in 1932 and passed away in Tournai in 2010, Robert Detheux is a singular figure in Belgian art of the 20th century. A graduate of the Saint-Luc Institute in Fine Arts in Brussels, he taught graphic expression at the Academy of Tournai until 1996, while pursuing a personal body of work with great coherence. From the 1950s, he established himself with a surrealist and highly personal graphic language. He received the Prize for Young Belgian Painting in 1953, 1954 and 1971. The following decades deepen the same territory. 1970s: body and female face, hybrid figures, textures. 1980s-1990s: grotesque, eroticism, black humor. 2000-2010: spectral portraits, apparitions, creatures. The present work fully belongs to this last moment. Little exposed during his lifetime, Detheux worked freely. The unveiling of his studio collection (nearly 1,500 works) made this coherence visible. His drawing, demanding and immediately recognizable, now attracts collectors of Belgian surrealism, in Belgium, Spain and Europe.

Estimate:$224.74

View all items fromCatawikiorContemporary Art