Boonaert Paul

Paul Boonaert is a Belgian artist, born in Oudenaarde in 1946. He is a painter and draughtsman. As the brother of artist Raymond Boonaert, he studied at the Academy in Oudenaarde. He worked as a colorist in a printing company and became fascinated with painting around 1970. From 1976, he was able to devote himself full-time to art. Besides a few still lifes, his body of work is mainly characterized by a certain duality: on one hand, the glorification of nature and landscape through the colorful and atmospheric recreation of its essence on canvas, and on the other hand, the surrealistic approach to the diverse threats posed by humans and technology to the survival of scenic natural beauty. He sublimates landscapes and winter scenes from the Flemish Ardennes; in his symbolic-realist and surrealist works, the graceful, vulnerable, female nude figure is often presented as a symbol of life threatened in many ways in our modern society. Pastel tones generally dominate his color palette. Paul Boonaert is listed in BAS I and "Two Centuries of Signatures of Belgian Artists" (Piron).