Jacques Lacomblez / Antoni Zydron - Corps Cité - 1981

Jacques Lacomblez / Antoni Zydron - Corps cité - Brussels-Poznan, published by L'Empreinte et la Nuit, 1981

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Jacques Lacomblez, born in Brussels on March 25, 1934, is a Belgian surrealist painter, draftsman, and poet.

Jacques Lacomblez developed a passion from his adolescence for German Romanticism, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Symbolism, Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Surrealism, the history of the Cathars, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, as well as, atheistic mysticism, some aspects of Eastern Gnosis. He painted his first surrealist-inspired artworks at the age of 15 when he discovered the universe of Giorgio De Chirico, followed by Max Ernst, who had a strong influence on his work. He also holds great admiration for Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. In January 1952, his first exhibition took place at the Galerie Saint-Laurent in Brussels, renowned as a hub for discovering young talents.

In the field of poetic writing, after being influenced at a very young age by Jacques Prévert, the discovery of Breton and Benjamin Péret marks the beginning of a new path where automatism will take on its importance. However, the influence of Mallarmé, along with collections like "Serres Chaudes" by Maeterlinck and "Les Reposoirs de la Procession" by Saint-Pol-Roux, remains decisive.

Jacques Lacomblez met René Magritte in the early 1950s and frequented Belgian surrealist poets such as E. L. T. Mesens, Achille Chavée, Marcel Havrenne, Marcel Lecomte, and Paul Nougé. In 1956, he became acquainted with Edouard Jaguer, the organizer of the movement and the magazine 'Phases,' with whom he closely collaborated in organizing various activities and participated in numerous exhibitions across Europe, Latin America, and North America. He founded the publishing house and magazine 'Edda,' which published five issues (from 1958 to 1965), and the publishing house 'L’Empreinte et la Nuit,' which released poetry collections by Daniel Abel, Achille Chavée, Claude Tarnaud, Jean Thiercelin, and his own works.

In 1958, through Jean-Jacques Lebel, he met André Breton. At the same time, he established close relationships with several surrealists, including Georges Henein, Wifredo Lam, Karl Otto Götz, Robert Benayoun, Jean-Pierre Duprey, Gérard Legrand, and others.

Under the influence of Marcel Lecomte and Breton, he spent a year in Cathar country, mainly in Montségur and in the Southwest of France. During this significant stay, he befriended Jean Thiercelin, Adrien Dax, and Christian d’Orgeix.

Lacomblez participated in two major International Surrealism Exhibitions: in 1959 at the Galleria Schwarz in Milan, titled 'Mostra Internazionale del Surrealismo,' and in 1961, at the initiative of Breton and Marcel Duchamp, at the D’Arcy Gallery in New York, titled 'The Realm of the Enchanters.'

In 1963, a friendship was born that would never be denied with the poet Claude Tarnaud; together and with Thiercelin, they shared, among other things, a passion for jazz and regularly mingled with Julio Cortázar, among many other memorable figures of the Arts and Letters. Split between Brussels and Paris, he met most of the surrealist artists and poets from around the world; he notably exhibited in Paris, Rome, Germany, Denmark, and Brazil.

In 1964, on the occasion of its 30th anniversary, a major exhibition was dedicated to it at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.

After Poland in 1980 (Poznań, Warsaw...), the Museum of Ixelles in Brussels hosted its first retrospective in Belgium, in 1983.

A lover of early, classical, and contemporary music, Jacques Lacomblez created significant pictorial tributes to Mahler, Sibelius, Xenakis, Feldman, L. Nono, Grisey, and Ferneyhough... and for jazz, to Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Ornette Coleman. He also illustrated several collections of poets, wrote prefaces for numerous exhibition catalogs, and his poems have been illustrated by various artists.

Under his influence, several small Belgian and French publishers have made (and will continue to make) room for authors like Guy Cabanel, Roger Brielle, Gilles Petitclerc, Ludovic Tac, and, of course, his friends Claude Tarnaud and Jean Thiercelin.

An anthology of his poems compiled by Alain Le Saux, 'From Elsewhere, Desire,' was published by Les Hauts-Fonds Editions (Brest).

His works have been acquired by several collections and museums, including the Museums of Modern Art in Brussels, Rome, Jerusalem (Schwarz collection), Warsaw, and Poznań.

To celebrate their 75th and 60th anniversaries, they were showcased in the fall of 2009 in a retrospective organized at the Museum of Art and History of Saint-Brieuc (Brittany), in partnership with the Collective of Visual Artists of the Côtes d'Armor.

On the occasion of its 80th anniversary, Galerie Quadri (Brussels) presented a retrospective exhibition titled 'Images from 1951 to 2013' in the spring of 2014; at this event, a color illustrated monograph featuring unpublished texts by Guy Cabanel, Jean-Michel Goutier, and Laurens Vancrevel was published, complementing the one already released by Quadri editions in 2004. (see Wikipedia)