"The Empress"

Please Click On The Title To View A Larger Image

(1974)

< Prev / Next >

"The Empress"  (1974) lithograph printed in colors, wove paper with full margins, 31 3/16" x 23 5/16"; 592x792mm. Edition size 75.   The second state (of ii), signed and numbered in pencil.  In very good condition [Jacob 72].

Paul Delvaux (1897-1994) was born in Belgium and attended the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts. His early works were in the post-Impressionist style, but changed to Surrealism having been influenced by Rene Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico.  In 1936, Delvaux shared an exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels with Rene Magritte, a fellow member of the Belgian group Les Compagnons de l'Art and joined the Belgian Surrealists in 1937, exhibiting in the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibit in Paris as well as solo exhibitions at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels and the London Gallery.  Having found his special Surrealist style, Delvaux's style changed very little throughout his life.  From 1950 to 1966 Delvaux served as president and director of he Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts of Belgium, about which time he began producing his first lithographs.

Delvaux's form of Surrealism is that of a fantastic world of realistic obsessions rendered in dream-world environs. His images are highly realistic filled with eroticism, lyricism and details that leave the viewer with no insight into the strange world his subjects reside. His imagery of semi-clothed and nude women filled with melancholic expressions, often times set at night in concrete environments, create strange and disquieting surreal fantasies. Delvaux's still and silent vacant-eyed figures appear perplexed to form an expression of what's depicted in their environment. His beautiful nude or semi-naked females subjects, carefully arranged in illogical fashion to look like settings on a stage, are cast in dreamlike light conjuring up strange and mysterious moods.  Delvaux's Surrealism offers us dreams rather than gaps between perception and reality.

"The Empress" is in a large Larson-Juhl "Boshi"  49 5/8" x 39 5/8" frame.  The 'golden candle light' time-worn antique finish has silver edges and lip with black undertones.  The outer camel linen and inner spruce suede Beveled Accent mats are set over an 8-ply rag are acid and lignin free and protected with Acrylite-AR OP3 (UV) by CYRO ..... $9,800.00 (wire-transfer only)