Paul Boonaert (1946) - Sneeuw te Etikhove

beautiful work by Paul Boonaert

Paul Boonaert is a Belgian artist, born in Oudenaarde in 1946. He is a painter and draftsman. As brother of the artist Raymond Boonaert, he pursued his training at the Academy in Oudenaarde. He worked as a colorist in a printing house and around 1970 he became captivated by painting. From 1976 he could devote himself to art full-time. In addition to the few still lifes he painted, his oeuvre is mainly characterized by a certain duality: on the one hand the glorification of nature and landscape through the colorful and atmospheric re-creation of their distinctiveness on the canvas, on the other the surrealist approach to the multiform threats that humanity and technology pose to the continuation of the scenic beauty of nature. Thus he sublimates landscapes and winter scenes of the Flemish Ardennes; in his symbolist-realist and surrealist works the graceful, fragile female nude figure is often presented as a symbol for life that is threatened in many ways in our modern society. His palette is usually dominated by pastel tones. Paul Boonaert is listed in BAS I and "Two centuries of signatures of Belgian artists" (Piron).