PAUL DELVAUX

Biography


Surrealist Artist/Icon.Biography | Gallery | Books | Delvaux Hardcover Book 31 Dec 1985 | Search Site

Header Image: Detail from Paul Delvaux (1897-1994) Le village des sirènes. Oil on panel. 1942. Sold for GBP 3,077,000 @ Christies, The Art of the Surreal, London, 28 February 2017.

All images © Paul Delvaux Foundation.


SURREALIST PROPHET
1 8 9 7   -   1 9 9 4

Paul Delvaux was born on September 23, 1897, in Antheit, Belgium. At the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels he studied architecture from 1916 to 1917 and decorative painting from 1918 to 1919. During the early 1920s he was influenced by James Ensor and Gustave De Smet. In 1936 Delvaux shared an exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels with René Magritte, a fellow member of the Belgian group Les Compagnons de l’Art.

paul delvaux

LE VICINAL EXPOSITION STEAMPFLI NEW-YORK, 1959
Oil on panel
© Paul Delvaux Foundation.

Delvaux was given solo exhibitions in 1938 at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, and the London Gallery, the latter organized by E. L. T. Mesens and Roland Penrose. That same year he participated in the Exposition internationale du surréalisme at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, organized by André Breton and Paul Eluard, and an exhibition of the same title at the Galerie Robert in Amsterdam. The artist visited Italy in 1938 and 1939. His first retrospective was held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1944–45. Delvaux executed stage designs for Jean Genet’s Adame Miroire in 1947 and collaborated with Eluard on the book Poèmes, peintures et dessins, published in Geneva and Paris the next year. After a brief sojourn in France in 1949, the following year he was appointed professor at the Ecole Supérieure d’Art et d’Architecture in Brussels, a position he retained until 1962. From the early 1950s he executed a number of mural commissions in Belgium. About the middle of the decade Delvaux settled in Boitsfort, and in 1956 he traveled to Greece.

From 1965 to 1966 Delvaux served as president and director of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts of Belgium, and about this time he produced his first lithographs. Retrospectives of his work were held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille in 1965, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1969, and at the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 1973. Also in 1973 he was awarded the Rembrandt Prize of the Johann Wolfgang Stiftung. A Delvaux retrospective was shown at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and the National Museum of Modern Art of Kyoto in 1975. In 1977 he became an associate member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts of France.

Delvaux died in Veurne, Belgium, on July 20, 1994.


GALLERY
P A U L   D E L V A U X

paul delvaux

SOLITUDE
Oil
© Paul Delvaux Foundation.

paul delvaux

THE WATCHMAN, 1961 (DETAIL)
Oil on unalit
© Fonds Mercator/Paul Delvaux Foundation.
Low resolution scan taken from book DELVAUX - BARBARA EMERSON (page 164). The mammoth book's photos are a 1000 times better. Book available @ amazon.co.uk (direct link to book)

paul delvaux

LE TEMPLE, 1949
Oil on panel
© Paul Delvaux Foundation.

paul delvaux

THE SABBATH
Oil on canvas, Private Collection
© Paul Delvaux Foundation.

paul delvaux

THE ENTRY TO THE CITY (DETAIL)
Oil on canvas, Private Collection
© Paul Delvaux Foundation.

paul delvaux

THE MAN IN THE STREET (DETAIL)
Oil on canvas, Musee d'Art Wallon, Liege
© Paul Delvaux Foundation.

paul delvaux

THE BREAK OF DAY (TREE-WOMEN)
Oil on canvas, Solomon Guggenheim Collection
© Paul Delvaux Foundation.

paul delvaux

LE VILLAGE DES SIRENES
Oil on panel
© Paul Delvaux Foundation.

paul delvaux

LE PASSAGE A NIVEAU, 1961
Oil on panel
© Paul Delvaux Foundation.

paul delvaux

TRAM NOCTURNE, 1950
Oil on board
© Paul Delvaux Foundation.

paul delvaux

LE TRAIN BLEU OR LA RUE AUX TRAMWAYS, November 1946
Oil on board
© Paul Delvaux Foundation.


BOOKS
P A U L   D E L V A U X

BOOK AVAILABLE:

Affiliate/Advertising policy.

About this book:

UNDER THE SIGN OF DREAM

I GREET WITH DELIGHT THE PUBLICATION BY FONDS
MERCATOR OF THIS WONDERFUL BOOK.
I HAVE SPENT ALL MY LIFE TRYING TO CHANGE REALITY INTO
DREAMS - DREAMS IN WHICH THE OBJECTS RETAIN THEIR
ACTUAL APPEARANCE, AND YET GAIN A POETIC SIGNIFICANCE.
IN THIS WAY THE PAINTING BECMES A FICTION IN WHICH
EVERY OBJECT HAS ITS PROPER PLACE.
IT IS MY HOPE THAT ALL WHO READ THIS BOOK WILL SHARE
MY DELIGHT AND DISCOVERY AND WILL EXPERIENCE THAT
SAME POETIC FEELING THAT I HAVE ALWAYS WISHED TO
CREATE IN MY OWN WORK.

PAUL DELVAUX
AUGUST 22, 1985

More on the book

----------------------

BOOK AVAILABLE:

Affiliate/Advertising policy.


Paul Delvaux. Biography | Gallery | Books | Delvaux Hardcover Book 31 Dec 1985 | Search Site | Top of Page

© Lenin Imports   E-mail