Paul Delvaux

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Vocation

Belgian artist, a famed surrealist painter whose output of some 400 paintings includes "The Woman With the Rose." His "Sleeping Venus," 1944, is in the London Tate Gallery. After having painted as a post-impressionist, then as an expressionist, he painted his first surrealist works around 1935. Influenced by Magritte and Chirico, he created meticulous surreal compositions based on Renaissance ideas of perspective and peopled with self-absorbed somnambulists. Often containing an ironic eroticism, his visionary paintings allude to the double standards of Victorian sexual morality. Delvaux's paintings belong to the realist branch of surrealism, which had its beginnings in the works of Giorgio de Chirico. He used de Chirico's deep-perspective space as a setting for the incongruous scene of a man raising his hat to a partially draped woman in "The Encounter" 1938; (Museum of Modern Art, New York City). Delvaux's imagery here - as distinct from the setting - is derived from Magritte but is less startling. Delvaux's work was exhibited with that of the surrealists, although he never formally became a member of the group. He became a member of the Institute in 1976. Delvaux died the morning of 7/20/1994, Furnes, Belgium. Link to Wikipedia biography