Roger Somville
Encyclopedia
Roger Somville is a modern Belgian painter. He defends realism
Realism (visual arts)
Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...

 against modern abstract art
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...

, which he believes de-humanize human beings.

In his book, Peindre, he denounces "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" ...

He was a member of the Communist Party
Communist Party of Belgium
Communist Party of Belgium was a political party in Belgium. The youth wing of KPB/PCB was known as the Communist Youth of Belgium. The party published Le Drapeau Rouge in French and De Roode Vaan in Dutch.- History :It was formed at a congress in Anderlecht on September 3-4 1921...

, and he wrote "La Création d’un art public exaltant la vie et le travail des hommes, leurs luttes, leurs souffrances, leurs joies, leurs victoires et leurs espoirs ; art à placer à la portée de tous, là où passent et vivent les hommes". ("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.")

The entry in the LAROUSSE Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique describes Somville as "A Belgian
Painter of an expressive and monumental style, concerned by the realities of the contemporary world."

Another description possible might be : "Brussels French speaking artist, inspired by the French-Flemish pictural tradition; one for the foremost national, or international, exponents of the realist position and movement; amongst the best-known contemporary artist…”.

And, paradoxically, one of the most contested, often by those who know his work least. For
Roger Somville offers a double challenge; to the social establishment, in his political
ideas and to the artistic equivalent, in his conception of art. A heavy load to carry for one man...

However Somville’s position remains steadfastly consistent, rooted as it is in his genuine opinions.
BackgroundD
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. He took drawing lessons at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
The Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels is an art school, founded in 1711.The faculty and alumni of ARBA include some of the most famous names in Belgian painting, sculpture, and architecture: James Ensor, Rene Magritte, and Paul Delvaux...

 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 François’ atelier). It was here that he would meet the painter Charles Counhaye who was to show him the way to expressive and monumental art (1942–1945).

Somville has a fundamentally generous nature: 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 Lénine. He admired Bertolt
Brecht, Serge Eisenstein, Erwin, Piscator, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Chaplin, Eric von Stroheim.
His sensibility would lead him to take the part of the underprivileged and those least able to defend themselves: 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.
An Advocate of Realism
The essential aim is to transpose the phenomena of social reality into the pictural medium, and
for this transposition to be comprehensible to the greatest number. It is therefore necessary to
use traditional terms.

In 1946, he created the Centre de Rénovation de laTapisserie de Tournai with his friends
Edmond Dubrunfaut and Louis Deltour and also the group Forces murales. In 1951, he founded atelier de la céramiquede Dour with his wife, Simone Tits.

Somville adopted the Aragon thesis, which was that "the central question in art had never been the battle between pure invention, which did not exist, and observation which is indispensable
but rather one of the sense of the œuvre opposed to it futility".

He wrote the manifestos of the Realist Movement in 1958 and 1966 and developed thinking in his two books:
  1. Pour le réalisme, un peintre s’interroge (1970) and
  2. Hop-là les pompiers, les revoilà ! (1975).


He wrote two unpublished works: Notre temps (a mural at the metro station Hankar) and Peinture, novation, idéologie.

Now, this was at a time when abstraction and avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 experimental art were at their
fashionable and market high. Somville, never one to be found on the sidelines, was in the thick of the opposition.

His sources are to be found in the work of the great masters and the giants epic painting: Rubens,
Goya, Géricault, Picasso (he met in 1951). His friends were to be Siqueiros, Guttuso, Pignon, Lorjou, Delvaux.
Means of Expression
Mural painting, aimed as it is as the widest possible audience, was a natural choice
for Somville to make. His work was to range from tapestry, of which Le triomphe de la paix (80m2/ 861 sq. ft), is doubtless the most well-known, to mural, which include the extraordinary work Notre temps (600m2/ 6,500 sq. ft.) at the Hankar metro, and the mural at the University of Louvain la Neuve of the theme qu’est-ce qu’un intellectuel?,(410m2/4/1,330 ft), which he realized with the Collectif d’art public which he founded in 1980. His desire to create finds expression in paintings which can be by turn wildly violent or strict and austere. In his drawings and etchings-both techniques which he uses with masterly strength and charm – he can be satirical and ironic.
Themes
Somville’s political position is the result of his personal sensibility. Generosity, love of
life, happiness and love all drive him to defend these human values by a political choice. Thus happiness, the implied other face to the coin, is represented in his work and as the result, his themes alternate as well.

They can be part of the collective epic: these are the great composition which tackle world events:
  • Non à la guerre,
  • La résistance (1950),
  • Mineur (1953),
  • La répression (1961) ?,
  • Socialisme pour l’Espagne,
  • Les réunions syndicales,
  • Vietnam (1966)
  • Les peintres (1971–1977),
  • Comité de quartier contre les missiles (1983),
  • Un intellectuel (1981–1986), or again,
  • the extraordinary Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau (1968–1987).


Alternatively, his energy expressed in caustic drawings: «La diarrhée intellectuelle», Les vernissages.

Other themes are intimate in tone and celebrate Woman, Hommage à Rubens, Les baigneuses, Les nus, Le modèle et son peintre are admirable portraits of his wife Simone.
His Art
Somville’s work is rooted in a refusal of what he considers to be futile aestheteism. However,
his work is not therefore naturalist. Rather than copy reality, he takes it as his source, reconstituting it and transforming it in new, pictural terms. Forms adapt themselves to the expression of a convictions, the pulsating, a character; they burst their limits, change their shape. The explosion of colours serves a desire to express the pulsating of an inner world, over and above the message. They thunder out, sometimes on the verge of the deliberate vulgarity, or, on the contrary are Gaiety and passionate love of live itself.

This is a long way from the anecdote or the tour de force. As Emile Langui says,
"We are in the presence of a painter, in the absolute sens of the word."

His work as a painter, théoretician, lecturer and activist and his efforts for peace (he represents Belgium on the World Peace Council
World Peace Council
The World Peace Council is an international organization that advocates universal disarmament, sovereignty and independence and peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass destruction and all forms of discrimination...

) are completed by his teaching life. At the Academy of Watermael-Boitsfort, which has become renowned under his direction, he has trained numerous artists, independent of any artistic dogmatism. He directed the school from 1947 to 1986.

Somville’s painting is known beyond the confines of a small coterie; retrospectives have
been devoted to his work in Bruxelles, Paris, Moscow, Cologne, Sofia, Sofia, Mexico, Berlin,
Saint-Denis, Bobigny, Liège, Budapest, La Havane, etc.…

Among the collective exhibitions in which Somville’s work has appeared are the Mostra Internationale di Bianco e Nero at Lugano
Lugano
Lugano is a city of inhabitants in the city proper and a total of over 145,000 people in the agglomeration/city region, in the south of Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, which borders Italy...

 (1960), the Biennale Internationale d’art at Venice (1962), the Biennale Internationale de la tapisserie at Lausanne
Lausanne
Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...

 (1962 and 1965), figuration et défiguration, at the Hedendaagse Kunst Museum in Ghent
Ghent
Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...

 (1964), the Salon de mai, in Paris (1977), L’art belge depuis (1945), at the Musée des Beaux-Arts André Malraux, Le Havre
Le Havre
Le Havre is a city in the Seine-Maritime department of the Haute-Normandie region in France. It is situated in north-western France, on the right bank of the mouth of the river Seine on the English Channel. Le Havre is the most populous commune in the Haute-Normandie region, although the total...

(1982), then Salon International d’art, at Basle (1985), and other exhibitions including Amsterdam, Utrecht, Antwerp, Ostend, Ljubljana, Frechen, Rijeka, Heidelberg, Venise, and Paris.

His work is to be found in numerous museums in Belgium (the Moderne Art Museum in Brussels),
and abroad (Mexico, Dresde, Faenza, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, Sofia, Paris and Lund).
Among the various important prizes he has been awarded is the “Prix de le Critique” with
Hans Bellmer, (1968–69).

Here then he stands : an outsize personality of prolific gifts and abundant creative force, with
an almost prophetic voice. For the evolution of contemporary art seems to be on of reconciliation
with reality. Many of Somville’s critics have already revised their opinion of his work ; many
others will have to undergo this paintful operation. For today the artist compels our recognition,
and his work, our admiration.
External links
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