The current exhibition of India ink on paper drawings by the Franco-Belgian Pierre-Louis Flouquet (Paris, 1900 – Dilbeek, 1967) at the Roberto Polo Collection. Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art of Castilla-La Mancha (CORPO) is the first in a series that will showcase works from the private collection of the international cultural patron Roberto Polo (Havana, 1951), in view of making better known the artists represented in the museum’s permanent collection. In 1922, Flouquet founded the important Avant-Garde journal 7 Arts in Brussels along with the architect and city planner Victor Bourgeois, and his younger brother the poet Pierre Bourgeois, as well as the painter Karel Maes. Also in the Belgian capital, Flouquet and the painter Jean-Jacques Gailliard (whose work is also represented in CORPO’s permanent collection) founded the revolutionary group L’Assaut in 1925.
Flouquet, one of the pioneers of the Avant-Gardein Europe during the interwar period, is importantly featured in...CORPO’s permanent collection with seventeen works, including sixteenpaintings and drawings (including three imaginary portraits), as well as one rug. In addition, Roberto Polo possesses over 400 other works —mostly gouaches and ink drawings on paper— which have never been publicly shown. Comprising two painted imaginary portraits and another drawn one in CORPO’s Toledo seat, the 267 rare and extraordinary works in this exhibition help us better understand the artist’s vision of this genre and the role itplayed in his evolution. Flouquet was one of the most significant artists of the legendary Galerie Der Sturm, which was founded in Berlin in 1912 and closed in 1932, when the National Socialist German Workers’ Party rose to power. The artist created numerous covers for the eponymous magazine, which was published from 1910 to 1932, and where the works of MartheDonas, Victor Servranckx, Oskar Kokoschka, Edmund Kesting, Franz Marc, Wassily Kandinsky and many other painters and sculptors were also illustrated.
Between 1927 and 1930, Flouquet produced a prolific number of brilliant drawings in India ink on paper. These works represent phantasmagorical, hallucinatory faces, almost nightmarish and are beyond any kind of naturalistic inspiration. One could argue that they were part of a character-study collection following the tradition of artists like Leonardo da Vinci or Flemish and Netherlandish Mannerists who loved caricature. Flouquet’s portrayals are distorted to favour expression, thus placing them somewhere between Expressionism and Surrealism. These imaginary portraits depicted the facial ‘defects’ that the Nazis would later reject as racial impurities. Flouquet’s portraits are contemporary to those of his German counterparts, such as Otto Dix, George Grosz and Max Beckmann, thus inscribing him in the evolution of this historic maniera sourced in Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s ‘Fantasy Portraits’ which later inspired Pablo Picasso.
With the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, Flouquet and all Avant-Garde artists were branded as “degenerate”. These dire circumstances led him to cease painting in 1934 and devote the balance of his life to journalism and publishing. In 1931, he founded the Journal des poètes and in 1938, the Académie française bestowed on him the coveted Prix de la langue française. The spontaneous and intimate nature of drawing thus became Flouquet’s natural and almost daily form of expression. Other than the intensely psychological imaginary portraits, imbued with human miseries, grimaces and vices, he also portrayed many artists, writers and musicians, such as the painters René Magritte (with whom he shared a studio until 1919) and Joaquín Torres García; the violinist and composer Pablo Sarasate; as well as the aforementioned Bourgeois brothers.
Biography
Pierre-Louis Flouquet was born in Paris in 1900. In 1910, his family moved to Brussels, where he studied in the city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts along with Constant Montald and Gisbert Combaz. He interacted with the avant-garde of Antwerp, Berlin, Brussels, Lausanne, and Paris; he shared a studio with Magritte in Brussels. In 1921, he participated in the International Exhibition of Modern Art of Geneva and in the Centre d’Art of Brussels with Magritte. He was the cofounder of the avant-garde group 7 Arts; he oversaw the painting section of its magazine and was the illustrator.
With Eisenstein, Ernst, Gropius, Schlemmer and Servranckx, among others, he was a usual guest at the Maison des Artistes of Baroness Hélène de Mandrot in her Château de La Sarraz near Lausanne, where the first International Congress of Modern Architecture, the first Independent Film Congress (1929) and many other revolutionary artistic events of the beginning of the century took place. Hélène de Mandrot, like Katherine Dreier and Gertrude Stein, is one of the pillars of modern art.
In 1925, Flouquet founded the L’Assaut group with Gailliard and organised exhibitions under his aegis. Having become the leader of La Plastique Pure, he regularly held exhibitions abroad: Buenos Aires, Chicago, Leipzig, Madrid, Monza, New York, Paris, Philadelphia, and Zurich; and on his own, at the Der Sturm Gallery (1925) and the Deutsche Werkbund in Stuttgart (1927), on an invitation from its founder, Henry van de Velde. He also designed many covers for the revolutionary art magazine Der Strum. He died in 1967. His works are displayed in museums such as the Museums of Fine Arts of Brussels, Antwerp, and Gent, as well as the avant-garde Musée de Grenoble. He had exhibitions at the Museums De Lakenhal of Leiden and Gent, and at the Tate Modern in London, among others.
Imágenes de la Exposición
Pierre-Louis Flouquet — Cortesía de Colección Roberto Polo. Centro de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo de Castilla-La Mancha (CORPO)
Entrada actualizada el el 24 mar de 2021
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