50 Facts About Paul Delvaux

Paul Delvaux was a Belgian painter noted for his dream-like scenes of women, classical architecture, trains and train stations, and skeletons, often in combination.

Paul Delvaux is often considered a surrealist, although he only briefly identified with the Surrealist movement.

Paul Delvaux was influenced by the works of Giorgio de Chirico and Rene Magritte, but developed his own fantastical subjects and hyper-realistic styling, combining the detailed classical beauty of academic painting with the bizarre juxtapositions of surrealism.

Paul Delvaux was born on 23 September 1897 in Antheit in the Belgian province of Liege.

Paul Delvaux's parents lived in Brussels, but his mother went to her own mother's home to have her first child.

The young Paul Delvaux studied Greek and Latin, and absorbed the fiction of Jules Verne and the poetry of Homer's Odyssey.

Paul Delvaux's artwork was to be greatly influenced by these readings, starting with his earliest drawings showing mythological scenes.

Paul Delvaux was then disqualified due to his weakness in mathematics, and dropped out after his first year Delvaux was worried about his future career, and passed the time by copying postcards.

Paul Delvaux's mother advised him to paint from nature, and in 1919 he produced his first watercolors, some scenic vistas.

In 1919, Paul Delvaux returned and studied with decorative painter Constant Montald, and other teachers.

Relatively few of his paintings from the late 1920s have survived, and Paul Delvaux recorded his destruction of 50 of his canvases to re-use the frames.

In 1929, Paul Delvaux first met Anne-Marie de Maertelaere, whom he nicknamed "Tam", and they fell in love.

Paul Delvaux was greatly saddened by this, and his paintings took on a more isolated, lonely, detached tone.

In 1932, Paul Delvaux found fresh inspiration in visits to the Midi Fair in Brussels, where the Spitzner Museum, a collection of medical curiosities, displayed wax models of bizarrely deformed anatomical specimens and diseases, including syphilis.

Paul Delvaux women wear elaborate costumes or are semi-nude, in scenes of classical ruins or dark forests.

Paul Delvaux would maintain a respectful but uneasy relationship with Magritte, who was his almost-exact contemporary.

Paul Delvaux admired the work of his younger contemporary, Balthus.

In 1934, Paul Delvaux joined Salvador Dali, de Chirico, and Magritte in an exhibition entitled Minotaure, at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles.

Paul Delvaux made his first trip to Italy, and would return there the next year.

Paul Delvaux perfected his mature artistic style between 1937 and 1941, reflecting both his sublimated desires and the increasing anxiety of the times.

Paul Delvaux spent the war years quietly at home continuing to paint, but exhibiting nothing in Belgium.

Paul Delvaux's painting La ville inquiete reflects both the chaotic worries and the uncanny everyday routine of his environment.

Paul Delvaux frequently visited the Museum of Natural Sciences in Brussels to sketch human skeletons.

In 1943, Paul Delvaux finished the first of what would become a series of articulated skeletons in his paintings, posed in lifelike stances and interacting with other skeletons or occasionally with nude women.

In January 1945, Paul Delvaux had a major retrospective show at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, including 57 large-scale canvases.

The next year, Paul Delvaux divorced his first wife Suzanne and moved to a temporary new home with Tam.

In 1949, Paul Delvaux experimented with tempera to paint a mermaid on the front of a friend's house in Saint-Idesbald.

From 1950 to 1962, Paul Delvaux served as professor of "monumental painting" at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Arts et d'Architecture de La Cambre, Brussels.

In 1952, Paul Delvaux collaborated with Emile Salkin and three students from La Cambre to produce a wall mural at the gaming room in the Ostend Kursaal, portraying a Roman-style classical dancing scene with a large mermaid in a prone posture.

In 1954, Paul Delvaux joined the 27th Venice Biennale, whose theme that year was "Fantasy in Art".

Paul Delvaux exhibited his paintings of religious scenes enacted by skeletons, but the show was censored for heresy by Cardinal Roncalli.

In 1956 Paul Delvaux visited Greece, where classical architecture originated, the land of Homer and the Odyssey.

Paul Delvaux visited Italy, reinforcing his favored themes of classical settings and costumes.

In 1958, Paul Delvaux led a team of La Cambre students in painting La Carte litteraire de Belgique for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.

In 1976, Paul Delvaux attended the formal transfer of the painting to a lecture hall at the Archives et Musee de la litterature in Brussels, where it remains publicly visible today.

In 1959 Paul Delvaux collaborated with Ysette Gabriels and Charles Van Deun to paint Le paradis terrestre, a 42-by-4.5-metre mural at the Palais des Congres in Brussels.

In 1966, Paul Delvaux began working with the 22-year-old model Danielle Caneel, using her slim figure as inspiration over the next 17 years in numerous drawings and studies.

In 1969, Paul Delvaux moved to Veurne, but still spent much of his time at his studio in nearby Saint-Idesbald.

Paul Delvaux's brushwork became less precise and more impressionistic, and his colors became brighter and more vivid.

Paul Delvaux's work became "less anxious, quieter, and more meditative".

That same year, the Paul Delvaux Foundation was created with the approval of the King of Belgium; its primary goal was to create a museum dedicated to the artist.

In 1981, Paul Delvaux met Andy Warhol in Brussels, who made several portraits of the aging artist.

On 26 June 1982, the Paul Delvaux Museum opened, with the artist and his wife in attendance.

In 1984, Paul Delvaux was appointed Chef de gare d'honneur de Louvain-La-Neuve.

Paul Delvaux visited his museum almost daily, and continued to create art, transitioning more to pencil, ink, and watercolor.

In 1988, Paul Delvaux left his studio in Saint-Idesbald to spend more time at home in Veurne with his ailing wife.

Paul Delvaux continued to make drawings, often at large scale, so he could still work on them despite his failing eyesight.

Paul Delvaux died in Veurne on 20 July 1994, and was buried there next to his beloved wife.

Paul Delvaux usually painted very meticulously and deliberately, after doing numerous preparatory studies and drawings sometimes numbering in the dozens.

Paul Delvaux became famous for paintings usually featuring one or several nude or semi-nude women who gaze languidly into space as if hypnotized, gesturing mysteriously, sometimes reclining incongruously in a train station or wandering through classical buildings.