Robert Detheux (1932-2010) - Libidineuse

Robert Detheux (1932–2010) Belgian School

Title: Libidineuse, 1977
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 80 × 80 cm
Signature: Signed lower left
Framed: Yes

Description of the work
A belly, a navel, a fragment of flesh suspended in a grey mist. Under Robert Detheux's brush, the body detaches from reality to become a symbol, a mystery, an apparition.

The surface of the canvas, streaked with scars and scratches, seems to inhabit time. The soft, vaporous modeling of the belly contrasts with the roughness of the background, as if sensuality is born at the heart of matter.

The title, Libidineuse, evokes desire — not flashy, but restrained, spectral, almost silent. Here, flesh is at once close and distant, intimate and foreign, sensual and unsettling.

Detheux transcends anatomical detail to make it a universal icon: a meditation on presence, memory, and veiled eroticism. Each trace of material becomes a fingerprint, each nuance a breath.

A work of rare plastic intensity, Libidineuse illustrates Detheux's artistic maturity, where technical mastery combines with a singular symbolic depth.

Provenance
This work comes directly from Robert Detheux's studio collection, kept intact and confidential for several decades before its recent rediscovery. It belongs to the artist's most accomplished period, marked by total gestural freedom and remarkable aesthetic coherence.

Artist biography
Robert Detheux (1932–2010) is a singular Belgian painter, whose work spans the major currents of the post-war era — from Surrealism to lyrical abstraction.

Born in Brussels, he evolved in a thriving artistic milieu, nourished by the legacies of Magritte and Paul Nougé, but also by Parisian avant-gardes. His early works, figurative and expressive, soon gave way to more experimental explorations: collages, assemblages, mixed media.

Close to the Dada and Surrealist spirit, Detheux developed a pictorial language in which the absurd, the dream, and poetry mingle. From the 1970s, he shifted toward lyrical abstraction, characterized by vibrant textures and a free painterly gesture, never abandoning his symbolic charge.

He has exhibited in several Belgian and European galleries, notably at Galerie Isy Brachot in Brussels. His works are now in numerous private and public collections.

The recent rediscovery of his studio archive, rich in over 1,200 pieces, reveals the scope and coherence of a profoundly unique oeuvre, which now stands as one of the most sensitive and independent testimonies of post-war Belgian art.

Comment
Libidineuse is a rare work, simultaneously sensual and metaphysical, where the body becomes an inner landscape. Through its mastery of material and sense of mystery, Robert Detheux asserts himself here as a painter of memory and silence — a creator whose rediscovery marks a significant moment in the market for contemporary Belgian art.