Robert Detheux (1932-2010) - Portrait spectral – 2005

Robert Detheux (1932-2010) Portrait spectral – circa 2005 Artist: Robert Detheux (Brussels, 1932 – Tournai, 2010) Title of the work: Portrait spectral Date: Circa 2005 Signature: Signed “Detheux” at the bottom right. Technique: Mixed media on paper. Pencil, pastel and white highlights, blue and orange hatching, reserved and reworked background. The main face is largely covered with white, the second face (profile or shadow) is built with dense hatchings, the eyes are emphasized in orange. The paper has been deliberately creased and worked by the artist; the grain and the folds fully participate in the material and in the spectral effect. Dimensions: 57 × 44 cm Condition: Very good overall condition. The material is held, the white highlights clear, the hatchings legible, the signature clear. The effects of creased paper are entirely deliberate by Detheux and are an integral part of the work. Some handling marks along the margin, without affecting the figure. Sold unframed. Provenance: Artist’s studio funds (acquired directly). Description: Work from the late period, around 2005. Detheux is over seventy. The feminine portrait, a constant subject since the 1970s, here has become spectral, almost ghostly. The face is three-quarters, pale, largely covered with white. One eye open, intense, in vivid orange; the other more sketched, almost erased. The mouth is closed, the nose barely indicated. The neck and shoulders descend into a simple tank top, with light red lines. Nothing is mundane. The white is too present, the gaze too fixed, too direct. The subject is not a single face. On the left, a second profile overlaps, built with dense blue and orange hatchings, with its own orange eye. The woman does not wear a mask: she is inhabited by another apparition. The white of the main face and the blue hatchings of the second cross, cover each other, contradict each other. It is a double gaze, a figure that looks at itself or is looked at from within. The deliberately worked crumpled paper reinforces the sense of presence-absence. The folds and the grain are not accidents: they contribute to the material and to the haunting of the figure. We are in Belgian surrealism of Detheux’s last period: spectral portraits, apparitions, creatures. The drawing does not quote. It constructs its own appearance. Signed, large format and with a rare material in the collection: a major piece from the 2000s, for collectors of Belgian surrealism sensitive to hybrid figures and apparitions. Artist’s biography: Born in Brussels in 1932 and died in Tournai in 2010, Robert Detheux is a singular figure in 20th-century Belgian art. A graduate of the Saint-Luc Institute in Fine Arts in Brussels, he taught graphic expression at the Tournai Academy until 1996, while pursuing a personal body of work of great coherence. From the 1950s, he established himself with a very personal surrealist and 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, erotism, 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 instantly recognizable, now attracts collectors of Belgian surrealism in Belgium, Spain and Europe.

Estimate:£169.02

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