UNKNOWN LANDS OF THE ABSTRACT

Autumn is well under way and although a season too late, the summer has disclosed a secretive and enigmatic September character. The start of the artistic events is celebrated with the revelation of a talented abstract painter, totally unknown up to now to the public, critics and other painters. There is, however, an amazing explanation for this. Over the last twenty-two years he has committed himself body and soul to his art and has kept his paintings hidden away in a safe place, as hard to find as Bluebeard’s lair. Added to this, is the fact that he never attends any of his peers’ exhibitions, even the most distinguished ones, and spontaneously shies away from anything artistic. His only inspiration is his father who passed away far too soon.

A surrealistic journey

No wonder he never went to art school or any other form of artistic academy. His love for painting came about quite accidentally when his grandfather gave him a case of oil paints as a birthday present, and at the age of thirteen he painted a rather good female nude as well as a self-portrait of his hands. It is worth mentioning that these were the only two figurative art paintings that he has produced throughout his career.

Only the people closest to him know that behind a seemingly ordinary person, there is a fascinating personality who can transform himself into someone quite unlike what can be seen on the surface, as if he were a Jackson Pollock !

His favourite time of day is sunset when his imagination and inspiration is taken over and he is driven to paint. His great satisfaction is to actually see his vision on canvas.

He says of this « In my mind there is a closet with countless drawers: I open one and see the painting there, just waiting to be brought to life ».

When alone in his studio, he is deliberately eccentric and takes advantage of his creative impulses by playing with a great abundance of tones – perfecting his own palette of colours – and scattering the pigments he has chosen on common acrylic latex. In this way the phantasmagorical palette of colours withdrawn from nothingness become a pattern never seen before. The magic takes over and after an entire night of frenetic work, when dawn arrives, the painting is finished.

His paintings are displayed at the Hilton Hotel in Brussels. These were all painted under the same conditions, when he surrended passionately to an occult instinct. They are luminous, radiate joy and express the unutterable. Instead of the usual subjects of introversion, his work shows the evidence of a multitude of extroverted objects. The radical permanence and the consistency are all the more impressive as it obeys, from the beginning, paradoxical, oscillating periods of his life. His frenzy for painting is usually spread over two or three years and then followed by sabbaticals, during which he satisfies his natural curiosity in all ways. He has thus functioned in this way for the last twenty-two years, unknown to the general public, but with painting ingrained both in his guts and in his soul.

At the age of fifteen, one of his favourite pastimes was decorating tin soldiers, whose moulds were supplied to him by a craftsman, and this is how he came to meet the owner of a renowned art gallery.

A friendship started and developed, although intermittent, close and steadfast over the years. Nineteen years later, Mr Hutse, discovers the true talent of the kid, the teenager, the student and later the manager whom company he valued over the years and decides to exhibit his paintings. The sudden, public display in broad daylight has thus started from a whispered and privy confidence. It is the end of a dazzling incognito.

by André KAISER in PARIS MATCH