Character (1928)

Combining mathematics, the dynamics of movement and pure plastic form, this drawing distils the philosophy of one of the great modernist thinkers, practitioners and champions of the early 20^th century. Kümmel-strength modernism.

Born in Paris, from 1910 Pierre-Louis Flouquet settled in Brussels where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts during the Great War. It was here that he met René Magritte with whom he shared a workshop. Flouquet became well known amongst the modernist circles through his works that contained a new spirit bordering between cubism and futurism arriving at abstraction in 1920. At the heart of the European avant-garde, in 1922, with the poet Pierre Bourgeois, the architect Victor Bourgeois, the painter Karel Maes and the musician Georges Monier, he founded the weekly revue 7 Arts.

After 1930, he abandoned painting to devote himself to writing and journalism. He published 21 collections of poems and founded, with Arthur Haulot, the poetic Biennale in Knokke. He was also a great defender of modern architecture and contributed to the revue Bâtir.

Pierre-Louis Flouquet’s work has been offered at auction multiple times, the record price for this artist at auction is 170,724 USD for The Kiss sold at christie’s Amsterdam in 2009.