Gallery overview

Literature The authenticity was confirmed to us by Mr. Olivier Bertrand and the work will be included in the catalogue raisonné

Exhibition "Tentoonstelling van werken van de Belgische schilders Maurits Cantens en Jean-Jacques Gailliard" Beneluxhuis, Den Haag 1958
"Jean-Jacques Gailliard. Oeuvres de 1920 à 1930. Passé simple et Futur antérieur" Au cheval de verre, Brussels 1958, cat. nr. 7
"Jean-Jacques Gailliard. Mon langage, c'est la joie" Stadhuis van Sint-Gillis, Brussels 1961, cat. nr. 8
"Jean-Jacques Gailliard. En l'honneur d'un des grands maîtres surimpressionnistes de la peinture belge" Gal. van de XXste eeuw, Antwerp 1972
"Le plastique pure belge autour de Pierre-Louis Flouquet" Gal. Armorial, Brussels 1977
"Jean-Jacques Gailliard. Les jeux de l'abstrait entre 1920 et 1930" Gal. Armorial, Brussels 1979, cat. nr. 10
"Jean-Jacques Gailliard (1890-1976)" KMSK, Brussels 1989, cat. nr. 20, ill. on the cover & p. 36, 43 Literature "Jean-Jacques Gailliard. Les jeux de l'abstrait 1920-1930" Xavier Canonne, Antwerp 2017, Cahier N°1 "De l'abstrait", p. 19 ill. of the drawing mentioning the painting

Literature "Veranneman. Visie en passie" Uitgeverij Lannoo,
Tielt 2002, p. 306-307 afb.
Opgenomen in het Archivio Gio Pomodoro Provenance Stichting Veranneman, Kruishoutem

Exhibition "Walter Leblanc" FS Gallery, Leuven 1982
"Kunst en Antiek" Jordaens, Mortsel 2011 OFFA, BRAFA 12, Brussels 2012 Literature "Walter Leblanc. Addendum to the catalogue raisonné: II" Géraldine Chafik, Nicole Leblanc e.a., Ed. Ludion 2019, cat. nr. 62bis, p. 41 and 64 ill.

Literature "Berlinde De Bruyckere" Angela Mengoni e.a., Mercatorfonds, Brussels 2014, fold-out II, nr. 16 reprod.

Provenance Gal. Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels

Provenance Gal. S65, Aalst (purchased by the current owner)





THE EXPRESSIVENESS OF GRAY

"Alan Charlton is an artist who makes a gray painting" - is the self-proclaimed adage of the artist. In the 1970s, Charlton decided to create monochromatic paintings using only shades of gray and canvasses whose dimensions have a scale factor of 4.5 cm, the thickness of the stretcher. He chose gray because for him it was the embodiment of everyday life, but he soon realized the potential and expressiveness of this color. While working within these strict frameworks, Charlton explored a wide variety of formal possibilities and combinations with his limited materials. He tends to work in series and methodically through iterations of an idea. "I want my paintings to be: abstract, direct, urban, simple, modest, pure, quiet, honest, absolute," Charlton says of his work.

Provenance Gal. Van de Loo, München
Simoens Gal., Antwerp





FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS

"Would I start? Would I start with small lines, small crosses, small dots, with a big thing going from there to there, with a big spot that would watch me, with an idea? Would I start by stroking the canvas because I dream it's already finished? No, I'm starting." (Alechinsky, Paris, September 1953)
And so Alechinsky starts this extraordinary work. He casually follows his feeling while he applies the acrylic to the canvas. The artist gives free rein to his hand: sometimes the lines are calm and elegant in warm ocher, sometimes he applies brusque, heavy brush strokes in bright blue and green. It is this same hand that tells Alechinsky's fantastic stories and gives expression to the world as he experiences it. The result is a painting bursting with spontaneous energy. The gesture is explicitly present as an expressive tool, reminiscent of American abstract expressionism rather than of Cobra
The painting is a joyful color play evoking instant delight and cheerfulness. But coincidence and the subconscious also have an important role: the images veiled by the splendor of color are not at all unambiguous. Fortunately Alechinsky also loves to play with language, as illustrated by the poetic title which pushes us more or less in the direction of the painting's story. Furthermore, we, as spectator, are challenged to use our own creativity and thus contribute to the creation of the final image. The image of the artist also becomes the image of the viewer.

"L'invention de la brouette" is the title of this oeuvre majeure – so to say in the words of the artist himself. Alechinsky does not make it easy for us as viewers. We can indeed see some wheels. Do the lines form a wheelbarrow? Does the mysterious head at the bottom represent the inventor? Maybe the artist wants to tell us about the invention of the wheel and he mingles title and image as a totum pro parte. Or maybe there is another approach that has to do with Alechinsky's trip to Lapland in 1974, where he makes this painting in the studio of his friend Bengt Lindström in Sundsvall (Sweden). The local stories and legends - which he loves so much - have certainly reached his ears and must have when creating this image. After all, it is up to the viewer and his imagination to complete the story.

Exhibition "Berrocal. Exposition de sculptures" Gal. Kriegel, Paris 1962 Literature "Berrocal" Denys Chevalier, Gal. Kriegel, Paris 1965, reprod.
"La Sculpture de Berrocal" Giuseppe Marchiori, La Connaissance, Brussels 1973, p. 52 reprod.
"Berrocal Catalogo General / Obras Recientes 1974" Miguel Berrocal, 1974, p. 68 reprod.
"Antologica Berrocal (1955-1984)" Ministero de Cultura, Madrid 1984, exhibition cat., p. 118 and p. 439 reprod.
"Retrospective Berrocal (1955-1985)" Centre Culturel de la Communauté Française Wallonie-Bruxelles, Brussels 1985, p. 26 reprod.
"Berrocal. 25 Ans de Sculptures editées 1964-1989" Miguel Berrocal, Artcurial, Paris 1989, p. 24 reprod.
"Berrocal" Jean Louis Ferrier, Éd. de la Différence, 1989, p. 129 reprod.
We would like to thank the Berrocal Foundation for their help when cataloging this work Provenance coll. Louis Bogaerts, Brussels ca. 1965-1995



For the majority of his iconographic works, Berrocal chose themes from the classical antiquity without losing sight of other sources of inspiration. His topics are male torsos, women figures, heads and portraits. In general it’s about the stylized, reconstructed, maimed parts of the human body. These anthropomorphic themes are apt to the most imaginative metamorphoses and have been a source of infinitive variation in art for thousands of years through the ages and for all art forms. If one studies objectively the artistic evolution of torsos, one can determine that after early baroque, during which the physical appearance is in contrast with the inner complexity and the abstraction, follows a more anatomical morphology “in which the organization of structures tend more towards the essence, the joints become more functional and the technical performances of the composition are concentrated on organic tensions” (Jean Dypréau, Brussels, 1983).

Provenance acquired directly from the artist

Literature To be included in the supplement of the catologue raisonné by Mrs. Manuela de Kerchove d'Ousselghem

Exhibition "75 jarig bestaan van de Galerij Campo" Antwerp, 20.10-05.11.1972, nr. 122 ill. Literature "Léon De Smet" Piet Boyens & Hans Bosschaert, Lannoo 1994, p. 74 ill.