ARTIST: Roger Somville (Belgian, 1923 - 2014)
NAME: Portrait of Harlequin
YEAR: 1967
MEDIUM: oil on canvas
CONDITION: Very good. No visible inpaint under UV light.
SIGHT SIZE: 24 x 32 inches / 60 x 81 cm
FRAME SIZE: 25 x 33 inches / 63 x 83 cm
SIGNATURE: upper left and on verso
Gelderen
CATEGORY: antique vintage painting
SKU#: 116956
US Shipping $90 + insurance.

AD: ART CONSIGNMENTS WANTED. CONTACT US
BIOGRAPHY:
Roger Somville is a Belgian painter who combines abstraction and realism and defends realism against modern abstract art, which he believes de-humanize human beings.
The entry in the LAROUSSE Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopedique describes Somville as "A Belgian Painter of an expressive and monumental style, concerned by the realities of the contemporary world."
In his book, Peindre, he addresses this issue by denouncing "tricks in the shape of art", "empty productions", "triumph of less than nothing", "null simplism", "aesthete bricolage", "conformity of what's never been seen", "submissiveness of the modern art in a globalized market".
Supporting his art theories, he wrote "The Creation of a public art praising men's life and work, their fights, their griefs, their joys, their victories, and their hopes; an art made for everybody to carry it there where men pass and live."
Born in Brussels in 1923, Somville lost his father, a worker in marquetry, at an early age. He and his mother faced a precarious material existence. His uncle, a lithographer and early Marxist, was a source of ideological influence and Somville eventually joined the Communist party. Somville took drawing
lessons at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (1940-1942), and then went to The Higher National school for Architecture and the Decorative Arts of Brussels, (in the architect atelier Lucien Francois' atelier). It was here that he met the painter Charles Counhaye, who was to show him the way to
expressive and monumental art (1942-1945).
As a young man he became involved in and was intensely influenced by the great social movements and conflicts of his day: the rise of fascism, The Spanish Civil War, the workers' movement. He read Marx and Lenin. He admired Bertolt Brecht, Serge Eisenstein, Erwin, Piscator, Louis Armstrong, Charlie
Chaplin, Eric von Stroheim. His sensibility led him to take the part of the underprivileged and those least able to defend themselves: in his mind, a stand had to be taken against man's exploitation of man and a painter's weapon in the revolutionary cause are his paints and brushes.
His work as an artist includes murals and tapestries, and his commitment to activism has led to him representing Belgium on the World Peace Council. He also is a teacher, training numerous artists at the Academy of Watermael-Boitsfort, which he directed the school from 1947 to 1986.