Paul Delvaux

1897 Antheit
1994 Veurne


Paul Delvaux was born in Antheit bei Huy on September 23, 1897. The painter and graphic artist was involved in Surrealism, but began studying architecture first. He broke off his studies a few months later in 1917 in order to devote himself entirely to painting. Paul Delvaux found impulses for his work in the Belgian Expressionists Constant Permeke, Gustave de Smet, and James Ensor.
In a visit to a fair in Brussels in 1932, Delvaux was moved to make such a radical artistic departure that he destroyed his earlier works. The indignities hidden behind the cheery, colorful, illusory circus world, the masquerading and the distance from reality became the themes that would preoccupy him for the rest of his life.
Influenced by Giorgio de Chirico, René Magritte, Max Ernst and Salvator Dalí, whose works he saw at the exhibition "Minotaurs" in Brussels in 1934, he began to translate the implacability of reality into absurd and surreal themes. One of his favorite subjects is the animated skeleton that he placed time and again into different contexts. His graphic works are impressive in their outstanding technique and artistic power of expression. Paul Delvaux was also responsible for the wall mural in the Kursaal at Ostende (1952) and for the house of Gilbert Périer (1954).
Paul Delvaux died in Veurne in 1994.