René Mels (1909-1977) - Composition abstraite - 1975

Dear customers,
The packages are currently being shipped from my winter retreat, still located in Europe. Delivery typically takes place within five business days. There is no need to worry about the delivery times.


Artist
: René Mels (1909–1977)
Belgian School
Abstract composition
Date: 1975
Technique: Colored inks and washes on paper

Dimensions: 43.5 × 31 cm

Signature: Signed and dated at the bottom « R. Mels, 75 »

Condition: Very good condition

Framing: Sold without supervision

Provenance: the artist's family

Description of the work

Created in 1975, this abstract composition marks a phase of René Mels’s graphic work in full maturity. The work is characterized by a dynamic layering of bold black ink strokes, tense and incisive, coursing across the paper surface with great freedom of movement. These traces weave and cross, generating a dense rhythmic lattice that structures space without ever enclosing it.

Colored washes — dominated by bluish, greenish, and ocher tones — provide an essential visual breathing space. They do not serve as a passive background, but actively dialogue with the line, creating zones of tension and calm.

The composition unfolds horizontally, suggesting a continuous flow, almost landscape-like, without an explicit figurative reference. The light emanates from the paper’s reserves, accentuating the sense of movement and depth.

The ensemble testifies to a subtle balance between gestural spontaneity and formal control. Each intervention seems to respond to the previous one, in a progressive build where the gesture retains all of its expressive charge.

Artistic context

In the mid-1970s, René Mels deepened a study focused on gesture and the autonomy of the line. After periods marked by a more architecturally oriented abstraction, he develops a freer graphic language, in which the line becomes energy, trajectory and breath.

This 1975 work perfectly illustrates this advanced transition toward a more fluid and immediate abstraction. The drawing is no longer merely preparatory but constitutes the very site of the artist's plastic thinking. The color, used with restraint, reinforces the internal dynamics of the composition without altering its structural legibility. This period heralds the artist’s very latest works, where expressive intensity reaches a form of essential simplification.

Biography of René Mels (1909–1977)

René Mels was a major figure in Belgian painting and printmaking in the 20th century. Born in Herent-lez-Louvain, he trained at the Leuven Academy, then at the Brussels Academy, before completing his studies at La Cambre. His work, initially influenced by Expressionism, gradually evolved toward structured abstraction, then toward a language increasingly centered on line, rhythm, and matter.

Active member of the Belgian Young Painting and of the group Art Abstrait, he fully participated in the renewal of the Belgian post-war art scene. His approach, based on a constant tension between constructive rigor and expressive freedom, lends his work remarkable coherence and intensity. René Mels died in 1977 in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, leaving behind a late body of work of great poetic and graphic force.