Robert Detheux (1932-2010) - Le bel igérant

Dear clients,

The parcels are currently being shipped from my winter retreat, still located in Europe. Delivery generally takes place within 5 working days. No worries about deadlines.

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Robert Detheux (1932–2010) – Works on paper, 1978

Title: Le bel igérant
Date: 1978
Dimensions: 49.5 cm x 40 cm
Signature: Signed and dated at the bottom

Condition: Very good overall. The erased and overlaid areas are deliberate and fully integrated into the artistic approach.

Framing: Unframed

Created in 1978, Le bel igérant is a particularly accomplished work by Robert Detheux, emblematic of his critical and poetic view of figures of power and their mechanisms of representation.

Description and visual strength

The work presents itself as a militarily legible portrait. The uniform, treated with great precision, reveals the attention to detail: decorations, medals, buttons and insignia structure the figure and assert its official status. Everything contributes to establishing the image of codified, stable, and recognizable authority.

In radical opposition, the face is deliberately erased. In its place, a mass of white gestures, visible and assumed, negates any possibility of identification. This erasure acts as a silent visual shock: the function remains, the individual disappears. The viewer’s gaze is naturally drawn to this absence, which becomes the true center of the composition.

Work on matter and ground

The surface of the work is marked by patient horizontal striations, superpositions, and smudges, which unify the whole in a subtle range of grays and whites. This treatment gives the image remarkable material depth and strong plastic coherence.

The background is not neutral: it gradually surrounds the figure, almost absorbs it, contributing to a sense of global erasure. This dense matter acts like a veil, blurring the boundary between body, uniform, and space, and reinforcing the idea of institutional anonymity.

Symbolic reading

With Le bel igérant, Detheux offers a powerful reflection on the confusion between the person and their function. Medals and decorations remain as empty signs, surviving the identity they were meant to honor. The title, deliberately ambiguous, introduces ironic distance: it evokes an elegant and controlled figure, while suggesting a depersonalized, almost administrative, management of power.

The work goes far beyond the military frame to reach a universal scope, questioning any form of authority based on symbols rather than on the individual.

Artistic context

Dated 1978, this work marks a period of full maturity in Robert Detheux. The drawing becomes a space of conceptual condensation, where the apparent simplicity of the image hides a great richness of reading and an affirmed mastery of material.

Provenance
Private collection, from the artist’s family.

Shipping
The work will be shipped flat, in professional, rigid, secure packaging specially designed for transporting works on paper, guaranteeing optimal protection.

Through its radical sobriety, the precision of its details, and the force of its erasure, Le bel igérant is a rare and impactful work, ideal for a collector sensitive to strong imagery, to subversions of the classical portrait, and to artistic approaches where matter and concept unite with great elegance.