Wouters Roger Biography
Roger Wouters was an artist of great impact, born in Brugge in 1937. Already at a young age he showed considerable interest in the languages of poetry and art, particularly oriented towards social studies. Over the years, he has developed a non-conformist and heretical vision of the world, committing himself to overturning current aesthetic canons and dominant paradigms. His artistic apprenticeship was guided by master Jef Van Tuerhout, with whom he trained permanently from 1955 to 1958.
Afterwards, he spent a period in which he was active as a coal miner, trying to immerse himself in the reality of the workers in the sector. Ability that allowed him to come into contact with "rambunctious" movements and the theories of thought of André Breton, as well as with the poetics of Michaux. In 1958, during a trip to Spain, he studied the figure of El Greco, while in France he found inspiration in Matisse and co-founded, together with Philippe d'Arschot, the group "Lumen-numèn".
In 1962, he created the "Onderaard" Group, consolidating his reputation as a revolutionary artist who always sought to express with intensity the need to express in form a painting that promoted freedom, avoiding realistic-illustrative aspects. These works have had a strong presence in museums and private collections around the world. One of the constant themes in his works was that of the woman, a symbol that brings together multisensory and ambiguous concepts, such as the house, which is seen as a protective refuge.
Wouters' works are characterized by sinuous lines, warm and sensual colours, capable of evoking the earth, the sun, the full-bodied materiality of everything that is real, but at the same time utopian and dreamy like the horizon of his dreams. His art conveys the sensation of a possible change, of a transformation that goes beyond the linearity of human thought. The theme of women is recurring in Roger Wouters' paintings. This symbol contains other dimensions, such as the home, a reassuring and protective refuge. There is also the presence of a bottle and a mug, as if to testify to the creative moment and escape from the excessive power of this omnipotent "mater", seducer and creator of everything that it manages to contain within itself, but also to emanate, to radiate from one's figure.
Roger's woman acquires the power of an ambiguous symbolism. It gives the idea of a reassuring presence, but at the same time its sinuosity communicates the sensation of a possible change, of a transformation into something that the linearity of man tries to understand.
