Robert Detheux (1932-2010) - Fragment érotique – 1976

Payment required before the evening of October 26. No shipments possible from October 27 for nearly 3 weeks (absence). Robert Detheux (1932-2010) – Erotic fragment – 1976 Artist: Robert Detheux (Brussels, 1932 – Tournai, 2010) Work title: Erotic fragment Date: 1976 Signature: Signed and dated “Detheux 76” at the top right Technique: Mixed media on paper. Overlaid layers, abrasions, hatchings and reserves, dense surface deliberately worked. Dimensions: 38.5 × 28.3 cm Condition: Very good overall. The material is held together and coherent; surface effects and abrasions are entirely intentional by the artist and fully contribute to the work. Sold unframed. Provenance: Artist's studio collection (acquired directly). Description: Work dated 1976, a period when Detheux deepened his surrealist language through material and the fragment of the female body. At the top, a pair of female breasts appears, with the nipples legible, integrated into a dense organic mass. The shapes are both precise and in the process of dissolving. Below, volutes and wavy lines develop, overlap and mingle, as if the body extends into the material or sinks into it. The surface is particularly worked: bluish gray, white, brown tones, tight hatching and scratched zones. The effect is almost geological. The fragment does not detach from the background; it emerges from it. Detheux does not seek immediate seduction here, but a presence of the body that resists and requires time. We are fully in Belgian surrealism of the 1970s as Detheux practiced it: fragment of the female body, active material, ambiguity between the figure and the surface. The eye moves between the erotic motif and the texture that absorbs it. Rare drawing from 1976, signed and dated, of particularly dense material. A significant piece from this period, for lovers of Detheux and Belgian surrealism sensitive to fragments of the body and worked surfaces. Artist biography: Born in Brussels in 1932 and died in Tournai in 2010, Robert Detheux is a singular figure of Belgian art in the 20th century. A graduate of the Saint-Luc Institute in Beaux-Arts in Brussels, he taught graphic expression at the Academy of Tournai until 1996, while pursuing a coherent personal body of work. From the 1950s, he developed a very personal surrealist and graphic language. He received the Prize for Young Belgian Painting in 1953, 1954 and 1971. The 1970s deepened themes of the body and the female face, hybrid figures and textures. The following decades extended this territory toward the grotesque, eroticism and dark humor, before the spectral portraits and appearances of the 2000s. Little exposed during his lifetime, Detheux worked freely. The discovery of his studio fonds (nearly 1,500 works) made this coherence visible. Today, his drawing, exacting and immediately recognizable, captivates collectors of Belgian surrealism in Belgium, Spain and Europe.

Estimation:€200

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