This statue features an oversized head of the artist Delvaux on a 4-foot pedestal in a very nice park with lots of trees. The statue os made of bronze, now a little green with age. The man looks very angry in the pose s he gazes out menacingly. The inscription on this monument lists his date of birth and death and a quote.
His father was a lawyer in Brussels and the young Paul was destined for architecture. So he followed the Brussels Academy, but at the same time received a training in the painting studio of Cash Montald, like his contemporary René Magritte.
He was first included in a group exhibition at "Le Sillon" in 1924. He worked several years in the vicinity of Boitsfort permekiaans to an expressionist play. On the "Foire du Midi" in Brussels in 1932 he received the shock that his art would further determine on his visit to the oddities in the "Musee Spitzner". In 1934, in his 1926 introduction to the work of Giorgio de Chirico, the Minotaur exhibition, his style underwent a decisive turn: the poet Delvaux started talking.
On January 1, 1933 his mother died, who "first love" (his "Tam") never accepted. That same year he destroyed more than 100 of his earliest works. While not exactly thrilled about the surreal paintings of Magritte, suggested in 1936 but both masters simultaneously on display at the Brussels Centre for Fine Arts. There was already clear that Delvaux went his own way, to allow the poetic, surreal or with improbabilities.
His father died in 1937. In that year he married Suzanne Purnal. The marriage, however, was an emotional disaster. Disillusionment and loneliness were so inspired that he created during this period his best work. 1938 was an exceptionally productive year. He exhibited at the "Exposition Internationale du Surrealism", organized by Marcel Duchamp in Paris in January. In June he was at a similar exhibition in Amsterdam, this time organized by André Breton and Paul Eluard. In London, he has appeared in the London Gallery of Edouard Mesens. He received the Prix de l'Académie still Picard and traveled first to Italy.
During World War II he refused to exhibit. In the winter of 1944-45 he was in the Palace of Fine Arts, his first major retrospective. Belgian filmmaker Henri Storck made the film "Le Monde de Paul Delvaux". In 1947 he met in St. Idesbald again and totally unexpected first love Anne-Marie De Martelaere are "Tam". On this he left his wife. He married Tam finally on October 25, 1952.
He was professor at the "Ecole Nationale de la Cambre" in Brussels in 1950 and in 1952 realized the wall frescoes in the Kursaal in Ostend. In 1954 he took part in the XXVIIste Venice Biennale. The Italian Reggio Emilia price fell to his turn in 1955. In 1956 he traveled to Greece, the country of his temple so often painted galleries. On July 5 he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium.
10 years later, he received the Belgian State Prize for his work of art together and he was appointed Chairman of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. From 1966 he lived half the year already in the Park to Furnes. Henri Storck realized in 1971 a new movie, "Paul Delvaux ou les femmes defendues", this time to a script by René Micha.
The French Academy awarded him as "Officer de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France" in 1972.
In 1973 he was awarded the Rembrandt Prize of the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Foundation in Basel. At the same time organized the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam are major retrospective. This exhibition was resumed the following year, in Japan, the National Museums of Tokyo and Kyoto. Exhibition in the subway station in Brussels, he made the monumental mural in 1978. That year he also became an honorary citizen of the town of Furnes.
The Brussels Free University, Paul Delvaux as Doctor Honoris Causa in 1979. The American pop artist Andy Warhol Delvaux met in Brussels in 1981, and made a series of portraits of the painter.
Paul Delvaux Museum in St. Idesbald
On June 26, 1982 was in St. Paul Delvaux Museum opened the Idesbald. In the 10 years before his death was followed by exhibitions in Paris, Ferrara, Munich, Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama and Himeji.
The iconography of the works of Delvaux which he derives his fame is difficult to fathom. Not only because the artist is in this respect seldom explicitly commented on the designs used by him, but also because it still remain for many explicable. Female nudes with large eyes dream, human skeletons, old-fashioned trains and carriages, stations and classic style buildings are the main elements of his imagery used. Over time, unusual combinations such as power poles between Greek temples nonetheless commonplace as part of a dream world, which, despite its strong naturalistic character aandeed extremely alienating.