Trebla

TREBLA, the pseudonym of Albert Mahieu, was a Belgian painter, born in Koksijde in 1913 and deceased in Veurne in 1983. He was self-taught. Professionally, he trained as a cook and pastry chef. He made his debut as a painter in 1952, and what began as a hobby soon grew into his principal occupation. His oeuvre can be divided into three periods. Before 1966 he produced refined and carefully composed works in which imagination, a sense of beauty and a fairy-tale atmosphere prevailed. During this period he painted, among other subjects, dune and seascapes as well as themes inspired by Belgian and Spanish folklore. From 1966 to 1974 he often worked on unconventional supports. In this second phase his work expressed sharp social criticism and frequently revealed resentment towards the judicial system. In the third period, from 1974 to 1983, he found a sense of calm and also gained recognition as an artist. He received several awards and exhibitions followed one another in quick succession. His works were usually inspired by a musical impulse, a sudden idea or a lived experience. In his dense, imaginative compositions featuring figures, nudes, animals and insects, he aligns with the fantastic, the dreamlike and a magical atmosphere. Apart from the works belonging to these three periods, he also regularly created single-line or monolinear compositions, executed in one spontaneous and seemingly uninterrupted line, guided directly by the subconscious and developing into a playful interweaving. He lived on a houseboat that simultaneously served as his studio, gallery and museum. His pseudonym TREBLA is an anagram of his first name. He received the Leonardo da Vinci Prize in Florence, Italy, won third prize at the Festival de Bruxelles and third prize at the Festival de Cannes (Le Tournoi d’Art). A posthumous exhibition was held in 2000 at the Oratorio di San Rocco in Fermo, Italy. Numerous works by him are held in the city of Veurne, the Museum Bachten de Kupe in Koksijde, the Museum of Religious Art in Ostend and the Cathedral of Chartres. He is listed in the Lexicon of West Flemish Visual Artists VII and in Two Centuries of Signatures of Belgian Artists. (Piron)