Art Promotion sa
De bie eugene
Presentation
Watermael-Boitsfort (Brussels) 1914-Quimper 1983
Belgium-France
STUDIES
1933 Academy of Fine Arts Brussels.
1934-1936 the Louvre School.
HIS LIFE
1947 Travels in Brittany, in Paimpol and Loguivy-de-la-Mer, and then in Guilvinec.
1947-1960 Living in Guilvinec (Finistère)
1960 Return to Brussels and launches into the great composition
Every year, stays in Brittany during the holidays.
1983-Following a terrible car accident in Brittany, death of Eugène De Bie and his wife. Burial in the cemetery of Guilvinec (South Finistère).
CRITICISM
If there are certain artists so convenient to place in a rigid category, this is undoubtedly a proof of their lack of renewal, of exigency towards themselves. Once the style is in place, it is no longer for them to exploit all the variations on the same theme. Eugène De Bie is an artist who shies away from any category. Just look at some of his paintings to see what he could extract from his art. Fantastic, baroque, anecdotal, expressionist, very clever who could attach a label. De Bie is all this at once but with the strength of being nothing in an exclusive way.
Born in 1914 in Watermael-Boitsfort (Brussels) from a Walloon family, De Bie enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels where he followed the courses of fiery Henri Van Haelen. Three other personalities will influence his beginnings: Anto Carte who teaches him the laws of composition, Constant Permeke through which he discovers the harshness of Flemish life and, finally, James Ensor who exercises on the young artist a more intellectual influence. Two years at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris completed his training.
But the war interrupts his first works. Wounded in 1940, he is left with his wife and two sons, in a poverty that prevents him from devoting himself fully to painting. We find in the paintings periods "red" and "black", the concerns and ghosts of war that haunt his imagination. Fortunately, little by little, the existence is more lenient and some works are sold.
Then comes Brittany, which will exert on the painter a fascination that will not fade until his death. The atmosphere of the place, the warm welcome of the inhabitants amaze. And De Bie immerses himself in the oscillating light and the power of the elements. This land, full of legends and mysteries, leaves it all to the frenzy of painting: still lifes, countryside landscapes, seascapes, views of harbors, portraits of fishermen he captures in full activity, nothing must escape the eye and with a brush.
Located in Guilvinec, a small port in southern Finistère, the painter is fascinated by the numerous circuses that stop there. Then begins a period where ballads, comedians, masks and draperies rub shoulders in strange lunar compositions. All the mysteries of the spectacle and the artifice are contained therein. Little by little, his vision of nature and his consciousness of the supernatural lead him to a mystical interpretation of the world.
One thousand nine hundred and fifty-two will be the year of meetings: Cocteau, Malraux, Picasso, all fortify in his approach but also make him aware of his loneliness in Guilvinec. In 1960, the De Bie family returned to Brussels. Significantly, the artist's imagination is refined and presents itself as an essential source of inspiration. This imaginary incarnated in the character both pathetic and theatrical Don Quixote.
In recent years, this inner world has been purified and brings Eugene De Bie to maturity. With his experience in Brittany, having worked with a powerful and beautiful nature, he turns to the ultimate synthesis of the imaginary and the real that he organizes by a code of colors, lines and geometric constructions. Human figures seem to face the infinite and advance serenely towards their destiny.
On July 7, 1983, on a road of Brittany, destiny strikes cruelly. A car accident costs the life of the painter's companion. Eugene De Bie, seriously wounded, died on August 20 and went to join his wife in the small cemetery of Guilvinec.
Thus disappeared a man whose only ambition was to believe in art, to live by it and find a source of joy. It is not necessary to say more. Let us simply look at this sentence of the great Rodin: "Beautiful works, which are the highest testimonies of human intelligence and sincerity, tell all that can be said about man and the world. and then they make it clear that there is something else you can not know. " DP
TO UNDERLINE
1985 - INAUGURATION of a commemorative plaque on the facade of the Artist's house in Guilvinec
1985 - DECISION of the Town Hall to give the name of Eugene de Bie to a street of the Commune.
1983 - "BRUEGHEL A MAGRITTE" EXHIBITION in Lausanne (Switzerland) De Bie was one of the few living Belgian painters to be chosen to take part in this prestigious exhibition.
MANY PRIZES AND DISTINCTIONS including the 1937 ROME PRIZE
1995-RAUMAN TAIDEMUSEO Rauma (Finland)
Personal exhibition of drawings organized by the Ministry of Education and Culture of Finland and the Museum "Rauman Taidemuseo"
2007, VATICAN MUSEUMS - Acquisition, by the Vatican Museums, of a gouache signed De Bie, representing a "Pieta Bretonne"
ROYAL INSTITUTE OF ARTISTIC HERITAGE of Belgium - Numerous works classified by the IRPA -
Monumental Christ in Cross - Church of St. Mary Mother of God in Forest-Brussels
Way of the Cross - St-Remacle Church in Jemappe - 14 paintings of 60x80
MONOGRAPH. Paul Caso, Denis Coekelberghs, Alexis Gloaguen
BENEZIT Paris Volume 2, pp. 295 and 296 - a complete page devoted to De Bie.
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