Robert Detheux (1932-2010) - Femme au chapeau – 1966

Robert Detheux (1932-2010) Woman with Hat – 1966 Artist: Robert Detheux (Brussels, 1932 – Tournai, 2010) Title of the work: Woman with Hat Date: 1966 Signature: Signed and dated “R. Detheux 66” in the bottom right, in ink. Workshop stamp “Robert Detheux – Atelier de l’artiste” on the back. Technique: Ink, wash and gouache on paper. Pen line, hatchings on the fringe, beige and brown wash, white and red highlights (forehead, mouth, plume or scarf on the left). Large vertical format. Dimensions: 55.5 × 43 cm Condition: Good overall. The line is crisp, the facial whiteness well held, the red strong. Period paper, visible grain, slight tonal variations, minor stains and conservation halos at the upper margin, without any damage to the face. Sold unframed. Provenance: Artist’s studio collection (acquired directly). Studio stamp on the back. Description: Large drawing from 1966. Detheux was thirty-four years old. The graphic surrealism of the 1950s has tightened around a female figure, already the subject of the following decades. The face is built in two materials. The forehead, eyebrows and a stripe on the nose are in red; the cheek and the long neck are treated with white. The eyes, open, look sideways. Mouth closed, earrings, fringe hatchings under the edge of the hat. Nothing is a worldling portrait: the neck is too long, the white is too thick, the gaze too fixed. Around it, the drawing remains open. A large hat outlined by a line, a five-petaled flower at the top right, a brown shape behind the shoulder, a large plume or red scarf on the left, fringed with hatchings. At the bottom, the hands and the clothing are only indicated. The beige of the wash holds it all together, with no decoration. We are between two moments. Far from the impossible still life of 1957, not yet the grotesque of the 1980s. The Woman with Hat is already an apparition: elegant, and displaced. Signed, dated, stamped, in good format: a sheet of graphic maturity, rare on the market, for lovers of Belgian drawing sensitive to female figures and warm washes. Artist biography: Born in Brussels in 1932 and passed away in Tournai in 2010, Robert Detheux is a singular figure in 20th-century Belgian art. Graduated from the Saint-Luc Institute in Brussels (Beaux-Arts) and 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 very personal surrealist and graphic language. He received the Belgian Young Painting Prize in 1953, 1954 and 1971. This sheet lies between his early period and the 1970s: the female face becomes the subject, the stroke remains free, the warm wash endures. The following decades deepen the same territory. 1970s: body and female face, hybrid figures, textures. 1980s-1990s: grotesque, erotism, black humor. 2000s-2010: spectral portraits, apparitions, creatures. Little exposed during his lifetime, Detheux worked freely. The exposure of his workshop archive (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:£169.52

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