Paul Delvaux Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Paul Delvaux was born in Antheit, Belgium, on September 23, 1897.
His most representative works combine De Chirico's metaphysical space-time research with the enigmatic poetry of Magritte's hermeticism. His portraits of female nudes placed in dreamlike environments are famous, with a subtle touch of sensuality, contrasting them with human skeletons placed in dark and undefined scenarios.
He studied architecture at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1916-17 and decoration in 1918-19. Read the full biography

Paul Delvaux was born in Antheit, Belgium, on September 23, 1897.
His most representative works combine De Chirico's metaphysical space-time research with the enigmatic poetry of Magritte's hermeticism. His portraits of female nudes placed in dreamlike environments are famous, with a subtle touch of sensuality, contrasting them with human skeletons placed in dark and undefined scenarios.
He studied architecture at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1916-17 and decoration in 1918-19. In 1936 he exhibited with René Magritte at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, both of whom were part of the Belgian group “Les Compagnons de l'Art”.
In 1938 he had solo exhibitions at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and at the London Gallery in London, this organized by ELT Mesens and Roland Penrose. The same year he participated in the "Exposition Internationale du surréalisme" at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris and in the exhibition of the same name at the Galerie Robert in Amsterdam, both organized by André Breton and Paul Éluard. In 1938-39 he visited Italy. In 1944-45 he had his first retrospective at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. After a brief stay in France in 1949, he was appointed professor at the École Supérieure d'Art et d'Architecture in Brussels in 1950, a position he held until 1962.
From 1965 to 1966 he was president and director of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts of Belgium. His retrospectives were held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille in 1965, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1969 and at the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 1973, the year in which he received the Rembrandt Prize of the Johann Wolfgang Stiftung. In 1975 his retrospective was organized at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and at the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto. In 1977 he was appointed member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts of France. The artist died in Veurne, Belgium, on 20 July 1994.