Marchoul Gustave

Gustave Marchoul was a Belgian artist, born in Liège in 1924 and died in Bray in 2015. He was a graphic artist, draftsman, painter, and designer of tapestries. He settled in Thuin. He briefly attended the Academy in Mons and was largely self-taught. He started as a painter and evolved from Fauvism and Expressionism to abstraction, but as a self-taught artist, he quickly opted for the graphic arts. He had a preference for black-and-white etchings. From the press: "G.M. feels as though he lives in a dark, unknown nocturnal world, through which a glimmer of hope seems to want to pierce. Above all, he wants to perpetuate the internal dream visions that are evoked in him by the unknown, by the existential vacuum, whose terrible darkness can only be dispelled by the advent of redeeming light. G.M. evolved in his successive etchings and lithographs into a world of ever-dark dream visions, increasingly populated by figures taking fantastic forms in the full throes of life." He taught at the Academy in Mons from 1963 to 1966, and at La Cambre in Brussels from 1966 to 1989. In 1964, he co-founded the Mons group Hainaut Cinq (Z. Busine, G. Camus, R. Dudant, J. Ransy). He contributed to portfolios from Cap d’Encre, Petit Cap d’Encre, and 26. His works are found in the Museum in Brussels (two abstract compositions, paintings, dated 1962 and 1963). He is listed in BAS I and Two Centuries of Signatures of Belgian Artists. (Piron)