Paul Delvaux
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting
We could make this publication thanks to small donations. How is 3 minutos de arte supported?
The Sleeping Venus (1944). Paul Delvaux
Oil on canvas. 173 cm x 199 cm
Tate Britain. London, England
In the paintings of this Belgium artist, we can appreciate his fascination with the disturbing scenarios of the metaphysician De Chirico, and with the Surrealist artist René Magritte. Decisive influences for
Delvaux to turn into a figure of the Surrealism, twenty years after it began.
Without being an orthodox member of the group, he participated in the International Surrealist Exhibition organized by André Breton and Paul Éluard in Paris (1938) and in the following exhibitions (Amsterdam and Mexico).
Woman and death (represented by skeletons) appear repeatedly in the work of Delvaux. In night scenarios, oneiric wastelands with buildings of classical architecture, usually naked women look with empty glances, as hypnotized. Cold, distant beauty, glorified and unattainable, in silent and calm nightmares.
In this painting, in a timeless, eternal city, Venus rests by a beautiful mannequin and a skeleton. A dream loaded with latent eroticism. Is it a coincidence or Venus is sleeping on a kind of psychoanalytic coach?
The painting of Delvaux is precise, it has an academicism out of his time. He achieved a very personal style to transmit his vision of the world. A world coming from the universe of the unconscious, inhabited by the desire and the angst of the ephemeral condition of beauty and life.
Recommended links:
The Disquieting Muses, Giorgio de Chirico.
You can also find more material using the search engine.
Would you like to support 3 minutos de arte?
Our project.
0 Comments