JANUARY 19 TO MARCH 4, 2023

GALLERY OF THE INSTITUTE

12 rue de Seine
75006 Paris

From January 19, the Galerie de l'Institut presents a selection of lithographs and etchings by Paul Delvaux (1897-1994).

Paul Delvaux started engraving late, in 1960, when he was 63 years old. At the time, he was a professor of monumental painting at the École nationale supérieure des arts visuels de Bruxelles (La Cambre). During a visit to the engraving workshops with his students, he made his first etching, Buste de femme.

At the end of 1965, he executed his first lithographs. They were printed the following year at Fernand Mourlot, the famous Parisian studio.

His engraved work includes about a hundred works that he produced until 1975, the date of his last creations. Women are omnipresent, even more so than in his paintings. His compositions are strongly impregnated with art history, from Antiquity to Giorgio de Chirico, including, among many other references, the School of Fontainebleau.

The Silence, for example, visible on the rue de Seine, evokes the famous painting in the Louvre Museum, Gabrielle d'Estrées and one of her sisters, (1575/1600, School of Fontainebleau, anonymous, Louvre Museum).

Finally, Paul Delvaux illustrates two books:

The first one, 7 Dialogues avec Paul Delvaux, illustrates texts by Jacques Meuris (Paris, Le Soleil noir éditions, 1971). One of the five etchings is presented.

The second, Construction d'un temple en ruine à la déesse de Vanadé (Paris, galerie Le Bateau Lavoir éditeur, 1975) includes texts by Alain Robbe-Grillet, one of the creators of the Nouveau Roman, Delvaux engraved eleven etchings for this work.