Demeulemeester Armand

Armand Demeulemeester was a Belgian artist, born in Ronse in 1926 and passed away in Ronse in 2002. He was a painter, draftsman, and printmaker. As a self-taught artist, he received advice and support from Georges Chabot of the Museum of Ghent. His neo-expressionist style occasionally leaned toward lyrical abstraction. His oeuvre can be divided into two main themes: on the one hand, numerous landscapes and still lifes, and on the other hand, works inspired by the Bible and other literary texts. From the press: "Color plays the major role; he unleashes it onto the canvas with intense force or a soft, floating touch. Alongside color comes his deeply personal transposition of reality. The artist starts from the concrete reality of a figure, landscape, or object, absorbs it, and transforms it" and "Poetically charged, pictorially pure, that’s another way to describe his work." Initially, he found inspiration in the landscapes of the Flemish Ardennes, Luxembourg, and Provence. By the mid-1970s, the human figure made its appearance in his works. A.D.'s extensive oeuvre reflects the love and pain that resided within his soul. His colorful paintings often bear the mark of helplessness, the sorrow of human imperfection, or the suffering of an unattainable desire. Among his religious works are a Stations of the Cross for the Trappist Abbey in Westvleteren and other pieces like the Creation story, rendered in a lyrical-expressionist style. His work is held in the Museum of Kortrijk and the Museum of Religious Art in Ostend. He is listed in BAS II and Two Centuries of Signatures of Belgian Artists. (Piron).