Sam Dillemans

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Sam Dillemans, Portrait of Ingres (2007), private collection
Sam Dillemans, Portrait of Ingres (2007), private collection

Sam Dillemans (born 17 January 1965 in Leuven, Flemish Brabant, Flanders) is a Belgian painter and is considered as one of the most important Belgian contemporary painters.[citation needed]

Contents

[edit] Background

Dillemans was born in Leuven, Belgium.[1] His father, Roger Dillemans, is a former chancellor of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.[citation needed] After High school, Dillemans studied at several academies in Belgium and abroad. He obtained the French Higher National diploma of Plastic Expression Option Art. He now lives and works in Borgerhout, Antwerp and for some years he has been teaching drawing and painting at the Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and was a guest professor at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts of Flanders, also in Antwerp.[1]

A documentary about his work and life, The Madness of Detail, was entered in the "Creative Documentary" category at the 21st International Festival of Audiovisual Programmes held in Biarritz, France in January 2008.[2] and won the FIPA d'Or for best creative documentary.[3]

[edit] Work

The work of Dillemans has deep roots in European painting tradition. According to Dillemans painters such as Vincent van Gogh, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Pablo Picasso are not artists of the past, but artists of today. They inspire him daily and at times depress him.[2] To Dillemans it does not matter when something is painted, but how it is painted. The method of painting, how paint and brushes are used to seek or construct some truth, is timeless.[citation needed]

His work is a quest to find the visual equivalent for the complex interaction between imagination, feeling, consciousness and the painting technique on itself. To achieve this goal, Dillemans says, painters have a hard and daily task to fulfil. They can not be satisfied by the clear perception of reality as an evidence of truth, but have to try harder to touch at the end their subjects. With tick strokes and an impressive relief on the surface Dillemans style contains indeed a highly form of elasticity and plasticity.[citation needed]

The process of creation is an important aspect in his work. During this process the paintings mostly seem to become gradually more abstract. Dillemans is convinced that a painting only has a chance to become "something" as the paint starts to get its own live. Not in the same way as the abstract expressionists, therefore his work is to much rooted in European tradition, but in a way that the strokes become autonomous and follow their own logic and at same time still are tributary to a recognizable and even classical form. Modernism, classicism and academism seem to come together in his work without any contradiction between each other.[citation needed]

[edit] World vision

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Dillemans world vision is rather sombre. He works intensively. There is a lot happening in different parts of his paintings. In that way painting is an intense occupation. A lot of painters in the past were occupied by the same endeavour and according to Dillemans, "a painter like Ingres drew his right to be taken serious. In his case it is about a beautiful aristocratic seriousness which has nothing to do with self glorification. Proof of that is that he still was copying Michelangelo at the age of sixty five."[citation needed]

[edit] Stages

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Because of his constants efforts Dillemans output has already gone through different stages. During the period from 1993 to 2000, he did an intensive study of the female portrait. His former wife modelled for him. Also actresses such as Hilde van Mieghem and Tania Kloek were sometimes used as a models. A second period from 2000 to 2003 was a period of reflection during which he studied the old masters. This phase influenced his later work. From 2003 onward he began a pugilistic painting project with numerous boxing scenes [4] in which a rhythmical movement between individual figures and the presence of physical bodies are in constant dialogue with the baroque. He also started a series of portraits of well known figures who he admires including Ingres and the Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx.

[edit] De Kus

In De Kus, a Belgian drama film by Hilde Van Mieghem, some of his paintings and drawings are shown in the background as if they were created by one of the characters in the film.

[edit] Exhibitions

A selection of his exhibitions includes,

[edit] Further reading

[edit] Books

  • Bekkers, Ludo; Stegeman, Elly (1995). Contemporary Painting of the Low Countries, Stichting Ons Erfdeel , ISBN 978-9070831738
  • Thompson, Jon (2007). Sam Dillemans - The authentic world, Ludion, ISBN 978-9055446926

[edit] Other literature

  • De Boeck, Hans & Moonen, Christoph., Sam Dillemans- Het kunstwerk op zichzelf (The art work on itself), in the Catalogus Ithaka 2001, Kultuurraad der Leuvense studenten, 2001.(Dutch)
  • November, H., Sam Dillemans - De frustratie als motivatie (The frustration as a motivation), in Ibidem. (Dutch)

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Sam Dillemans, the artist. Sam Dillemans. Retrieved on 2008-03-05.
  2. ^ a b Sam Dillemans. International Festival of Audiovisual Programmes (2007). Retrieved on 2008-03-05.
  3. ^ "Documentary about painter Sam Dillemans wins FIPA d'Or", De Standaard, 2008-01-27. Retrieved on 2008-03-05. (Dutch) 
  4. ^ "The biggest pugilistic painting project ever", worldcupofboxing.com, 2005-01-05. Retrieved on 2008-03-05. 
  5. ^ "Sam Dillemans: Datum 30 september 2005- 31 december 2005", Musea Antwerpen. Retrieved on 2008-03-05. (Dutch) 

[edit] External links