Flouquet Pierre-Louis

Pierre-Louis Flouquet was a Franco-Belgian artist, born in Paris in 1900 and died in Dilbeek in 1967. He was a painter, draftsman, graphic artist, poet and publisher. His family settled in Brussels in 1909. He was educated at the Academy in Brussels, under the guidance of C. Montald and G. Combaz (1914-1918). He befriended R. Magritte and together they shared a studio. In the beginning he still worked quite figuratively, but the influence of Cubism was still clearly visible. Numerous portraits were created in that period. In 1920 he came into contact with the ideas of De Stijl and Mondrian. In 1922, together with the Bourgeois brothers, he founded the magazine 7 Arts. He evolved towards abstraction, without sacrificing his interest in the human figure. in the mid-1920s he came very close to complete abstraction. In addition, he designed theater sets and costumes and he made many linocuts as illustrations for books about theater or poetry collections. During that period he lived in Paris, where mainly drawings were created. Pierre-Louis Flouquet co-founded the Group l'Assaut in 1925. After his return to Belgium in 1930, he dealt with religious themes in expressionist design. However, he received no recognition. At that point he gave up painting and opted for a career as a poet. He did, however, still work as an illustrator for architecture magazines and published a few poetry magazines. His oeuvre was created over a period of about fifteen years (1920-1935) and shows a remarkable evolution from cubist, somewhat fauvist realism over abstraction to expressionism. From 1933 he became the driving force behind the publications of the Journal des Poètes. In 1951 he founded the Rencontres Europeennes de Poésie in Knokke, of which he was also secretary general. In 1952 he did the same for the Biennale Internationale de Poésie (Knokke, 1952-1961), of which he became vice-chairman. He was a member of the Libre Académie de Belgique (Picard Foundation). He was an honorary member of the Associazione Internazionale di Poesia in Rome. Work by Pierre-Louis Flouquet can be found in museums in Brussels, Ixelles and Ostend. He is mentioned in BAS I and Two centuries of signatures of Belgian artists. (Piron)