Declercq Hugo
Hugo Declercq was a Belgian artist who was born in Ghent in 1930 and who died in 1996, also in Ghent. He was a painter, draftsman and sculptor. Education evening courses at the Academy in Ghent (1945-1950). Worked in figurative design until 1960. Prix de Rome in 1964. Laureate of the Jeune Peinture Belge in 1965. Evolved in his paintings and sculpture towards constructivism and mobile work. His works come across smoothly and spontaneously. Black, white and gray tonalities predominate on his color palette. From the press: 'From an ephemeral figuration, he quickly evolved into a form of purging that still refers to plants and stones, but which will soon give preference to simple geometric forms' and 'He testified, in his lavish calligraphy, of a particularly poetic sense of placing motifs and signs in a broad expanse of white, of a pronounced sense of harmony and a clear preference for black-and-white dynamics. Later, a stern yet lyrical form of geo-abstraction appeared, accompanied by optic art touches. Sometimes his canvases refer to some reality, but in the end they are mainly spiritually nourished phenomena in a geometric metamorphosis, bathed in a slender and sensitive colour.' He designed, among other things, theater costumes for Thyestes by Hugo Claus. Work in the Museums in Ghent and Ostend, among others. Mentioned in BAS II and Two centuries of signatures of Belgian artists. (piron)