Sam Dillemans
Encyclopedia
Background
Sam Dillemans was born in LeuvenLeuven
Leuven is the capital of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region, Belgium...
, Flemish Brabant
Flemish Brabant
Flemish Brabant is a province of Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium. It borders on the Belgian provinces of Antwerp, Limburg, Liège, Walloon Brabant, Hainaut and East Flanders. Flemish Brabant also completely surrounds the Brussels-Capital Region. Its capital is Leuven...
, Flanders
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
. After high school, Dillemans studied at several academies in Belgium and abroad. He obtained the French Higher National diploma of Plastic Expression Option Art. 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.
He now lives and works in Borgerhout
Borgerhout
Borgerhout is a district of the municipality and city of Antwerp in the Flemish Region of Belgium. The district houses 41,614 inhabitants reflecting 90 nationalities...
, Antwerp.
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
Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels
The International Festival of Audiovisual Programmes , founded in 1987 by Michel Mitrani , was first held in Cannes in October 1987....
held in Biarritz
Biarritz
Biarritz is a city which lies on the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in south-western France. It is a luxurious seaside town and is popular with tourists and surfers....
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in January 2008. and won the FIPA d'Or for best creative documentary.
Work
The work of Dillemans has deep roots in European painting tradition. According to Dillemans, painters such as Vincent van GoghVincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres's portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest...
and Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
are not artists of the past, but artists of today and they continue inspire him in his work. To Dillemans it does not matter when something was painted, but how it was painted. The method of painting, how paint and brushes are used to seek or construct a striking image, is timeless.
His work is a quest to find the visual equivalent for the complex interaction between imagination, feeling, consciousness and the painting technique itself. To achieve this goal, Dillemans says, painters have a difficult and at times tedious task to fulfill. They cannot not be satisfied with the clear perception of reality as an evidence of truth, but must try harder to understand more fully their subjects. With thick strokes and an impressive relief on the surface, Dillemans's style contains a refined form of elasticity and plasticity.
The process of creation is an important aspect in his work. During this process the paintings appear at times to become gradually more abstract. Dillemans is convinced that a painting only has a chance to take form once the paint begins to take on a life of its own. This style is more firmly rooted in the European tradition rather than that of abstract expressionism and although the strokes become autonomous and follow their own logic, the final form stills holds true to a recognizable and even classical form. Modernism, classicism and academism seem to come together in his work without any contradiction among the styles.
World vision
Dillemans's world vision is rather sombre. He works intensively and there is much action and movement within his work and in this way his painting becomes an intense occupation. Many painters of the past were also occupied by this same endeavour. Dillemans states that, "a painter like Ingres drew on his right to be taken seriously. In his case it is about a beautiful aristocratic seriousness which has nothing to do with self glorification. Proof of this is that he was still copying Michelangelo at the age of sixty five."Stages
Because of his prolific work and creativity, Dillemans's output has already passed through several different stages. During the period from 1993 to 2000, he did an intensive study of the female portrait, at times using his wife as a model. A second period from 2000 to 2003 was a period of reflection during which he studied the old masters. This phase would also influence his later work. From 2003 onward he began a pugilisticBoxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
painting project with numerous boxing scenes
in which a rhythmical movement between individual figures and the presence of physical bodies are in constant dialogue with the baroque. He also began a series of portraits of well known figures who he admires including Ingres and the Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx
Eddy Merckx
Edouard Louis Joseph, Baron Merckx , better known as Eddy Merckx, is a Belgian former professional cyclist. The French magazine Vélo called him "the most accomplished rider that cycling has ever known." The American publication, VeloNews, called him the greatest and most successful cyclist of all...
.
Trivia
- In De Kus, a Belgian film drama by Hilde Van Mieghem, some of his paintings and drawings are shown in the background representing works created by one of the characters in the film.
- Belgian singer Axelle RedAxelle RedAxelle Red is a Belgian singer-songwriter.-Biography:She was born at Hasselt, Flanders, Belgium, the daughter of Roland Demal, a solicitor in Hasselt and Councillor for the Flemish Liberals and Democrats in the City Council.Nowadays a committed artist and a militant humanist, back in 1993 Axelle...
used an image of "Lovers", a painting by Sam Dillemans as a cover for her album Sisters & Empathy. According to her the painting symbolises a masculine kind of sexuality which remains respectful toward the female body.
Exhibitions
A selection of his exhibitions includes,- Classical beauty at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, 1994
- Belgian Art 1945-1999 in WarsawWarsawWarsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, PolandPolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, 1999 - International Young Art, Art Link Sotheby'sSotheby'sSotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...
, ChicagoChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
; ViennaViennaVienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, AustriaAustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
and Tel AvivTel AvivTel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
, IsraelIsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, 2000 - 14+4, Kunt aus den EU-Ländern, Breuner Palace, Vienna, 2000
- Exhibition in the Rubens HouseRubenshuisThe Rubenshuis is the former home and studio of Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp. It is now a museum.- Rubens's house during his lifetime :...
, Antwerp, 30 September to 31 December 2005 - Sam Dillemans, paintings 2003-2009, Antwerp, 3 October to 6 December 2009
Further reading
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
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.
- November, Hans, Sam Dillemans - De frustratie als motivatie (The frustration as a motivation), in Ibidem.