Marcus de Vestele (1941-2024) - Belle composition Cobra

Marcus de Vestele (1941-2024) - Cobra Composition

• Technique: Watercolor on paper
• Period: Circa 1970-1975
• Dimensions: 50 × 40 cm (including mat)
• Signature: Studio stamp “Marcus de Vestele – Atelier de l’artiste” on the back (original stamp visible in the photo)
• Condition: Good overall. Vivid colors and perfectly preserved, normal period-atelier traces for a work directly from the artist’s workshop. No restoration.
• Presentation: Sold unframed
• Provenance: Artist’s studio (original stamp)

Description of the work
Powerful and expressive watercolor from Marcus de Vestele’s Cobra period, dominated by an intense deep blue background that strongly highlights the central forms. A totemic or hybrid figure unfolds at the heart of the composition, composed of broad white planes accented with bright, sweeping yellow strokes, particularly dynamic in the upper part. Hints of red-brown and olive enrich this organic and gestural form.

The gesture is quick, free, and vigorous, typical of the Cobra spirit: spontaneity of line, raw vital energy, and expressive freedom. The primary and contrasting colors (intense ultramarine blue, bright yellow, white, and earth tones) create a powerful visual tension and great vitality. This watercolor possesses an almost sculptural presence that echoes the monumental volumes of the artist’s three-dimensional work.

This work is representative of Marcus de Vestele’s secret and unpublished pictorial production, and it fits perfectly within the Cobra movement’s heritage while asserting a strong personal voice: rejection of academicism, celebration of instinctive life and primitive forms.

Artist biography
Marcus de Vestele (1941-2024) is one of the most singular figures in Belgian contemporary art.

Trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, he established himself in the 1960s as a major sculptor, internationally recognized for his monumental abstract sculptures in Carrara marble, Bardiglio marble, or Condroz granite.

Alongside his career as a sculptor, from 1963 to the early 1980s, he secretly developed in the absolute seclusion of his studio a pictorial practice of total freedom and remarkable audacity.

Deeply influenced by the Cobra movement, he drew from it a vibrant, figurative abstraction—gestural and colorful: spontaneity of gesture, explosive colors, organic and totemic forms, radical rejection of academicism, and celebration of life in its most instinctive and vital form.

These paintings, which remained entirely unpublished during his lifetime (about 400 works discovered by his family after his death in 2024), now constitute a rare and powerful corpus that deeply dialogues with his sculptural work. Cobra compositions by Marcus de Vestele are today highly sought after by discerning collectors for their authenticity, raw energy, and unique place in the Cobra movement’s heritage.