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Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Contemporary Art / Robert Detheux (1932-2010) - Portrait surréaliste – Figures spectrales – 2007
Robert Detheux (1932-2010) – Surrealist Portrait – Spectral Figures – 2007 Artist: Robert Detheux (Brussels, 1932 – Tournai, 2010) Title of the work: Surrealist Portrait – Spectral Figures Date: 2007 Signature: Signed and dated “Detheux 2007” at lower left. Technique: Mixed media on paper (brown washes, smudging, pastel/chalk, white highlights). The support, with dense texture, spotting and irregular grain, is treated like an ancient skin. Faces emerge from the wash through broad white smudges. Dimensions: 55 × 45 cm Condition: Very good overall condition. Remarkable preservation of the smudges, white highlights and the spectral modeling. The spots, runs and variations in the paper’s texture are an integral part of the composition. Sold unframed. Provenance: Artist’s studio collection (acquired directly). Description: Large and rare surrealist drawing from 2007, fully within the final period of Robert Detheux, that of apparitions and spectral figures. On an ochre-brown background worked like a map or a mineral skin, two faces overlap and merge. The gaze, fixed and hypnotic, dominates the whole composition. The orbits are deep, the features barely indicated, the modeling achieved by broad white smudges that turn the faces into appearances rather than portraits. Nothing is trivial. Detheux does not depict faces: he conjures a double, troubled, almost fusion-like presence. The brown of the wash, the white highlights and the grain of the old paper create a rare density, between spectral eroticism, vanity and ritual. The work belongs to those large sheets from the 2000-2010 period where Detheux reaches an extreme tension between figuration and appearance. Large format, intensity of the gaze, rarity of surrealist portraits from this final period: a work characteristic of the artist’s maturity, which will appeal to lovers of Belgian surrealist art sensitive to spectral figures, to superimposition and to apparition. Artist biography Born in Brussels in 1932 and passed away in 2010, Robert Detheux is a singular, demanding and deeply endearing figure of 20th-century Belgian art. A graduate of the Saint-Luc Institute in Fine Arts in Brussels, he taught graphic expression at the Academy of Tournai until 1996, while developing a personal body of work of great coherence and remarkable freedom. His artistic career unfolds in several major periods: • From the 1950s-1960s, he asserted a powerful surrealist and expressionist language, marked by intense portraits and dreamlike compositions. • In the 1970s, he explored with sensuality and obsession the theme of the body and the female face, developing hybrid figures and highly elaborate textures. • The 1980s-1990s saw the emergence of a more hybrid and grotesque universe, mixing eroticism, black humor and poetry. • Finally, the 2000-2010 period, particularly sought after today, is one of total maturity: spectral portraits, apparitions, hybrid figures and feline creatures executed with exceptional mastery — the period to which this drawing fully belongs. Little exposed during his lifetime, Robert Detheux freely created an intimate, subversive and poetic universe that belongs only to him. Rediscovered in recent years thanks to the uncovering of his substantial studio fund (nearly 1,500 works), his oeuvre now enjoys growing legitimate enthusiasm among enlightened collectors in Belgium, Spain and Europe. A master of drawing, Detheux leaves behind an authentic, vibrant and timeless body of work that continues to surprise and seduce with its evocative power, deep humanity and modernity. Collecting Detheux is to enter a unique dreamlike world, populated by hybrid figures, spectral faces and waking dreams.
Estimate:$226.81
To the auctionView all items fromCatawikiorContemporary Art
Estimate:
$226.81
1996 Australia 1/10 oz Gold Lunar Rat (Series I)
12/06/2017
$475
Est: $590
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