Francis Dusepulchre 1934-2013

As a professor of visual arts, Francis Dusépulchre established himself in the most original way within the international movement of constructed, minimal, and monochrome abstraction. Since the early 1970s, he has continually renewed his unique artistic language at the intersection of painting and sculpture. From 1968, he turned to abstract sculpture, creating monochrome masonite reliefs: fluid geometries where light plays across overlapping, concave, or convex planes, exploring subtle interactions of light and shadow through gently curved or bulging bas-reliefs – for which Robert Rousseau described him as a “showman of shadows.” In Dusépulchre’s work, carving, hollowing, and fine incisions create a line structure that is both controlled and poetic. In 1979, he introduced tensioned wires into his compositions, and in 1983, optical fibers, enhancing the poetic dimension of his work. Co-founder of the Art Concret group in Hainaut (1973), he is also interested in monumental integration into the environment, creating sculptures for the Mariemont Museum, the Trazegnies Garden City park, the foyer of the Nivelles Cultural Center, the University of Sart Tilman, and the Charleroi metro. At the turn of the 21st century, he developed his monumental transparencies: sculptures made of carbon fiber assemblies suspended between the walls of plexiglass cases. From 2004 onwards, he explored the effects of adding sand to his pigments in series of materialist canvases that constitute true installations. His works, often intended for architectural spaces, demonstrate his ability to create serene tensions through a secret dialogue between shadow and light.