Grande Nature Morte Au Drap Jaune

Biography of Gustave Camus ( 1914-1984, Belgian )

Gustave Camus was a Belgian expressionist painter born in Chatelet on April 4, 1914 and died in Mons June 9, 1984. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed as a house painter and had no desire to become an artist. His latent talent was spotted by a family friend who offered to pay his schooling at the Industrial School of Charleroi. So in 1930 he enrolled at the school. At first he studied sculpture under the guidance of Eugene Paulus but turned his attention to easel painting shortly after. For the next four years he took various classes and soon gained a style of his own owing much to the influence of the Modernist artists of the day.

As with most of his contemporaries, the war curtailed their careers and Camus’s was much the same. In 1946 he left Belgian and moved to Britain not returning to his homeland until 1950. This sojourn in Britain changed his style of painting and the ensuing works have a much more Expressionist feel about them. He joined the Jeune Peinture Belge, a group of artists dedicated to the ideals of Modern Art and was soon exhibiting with them which continued throughout the early 1950’s. In 1951 he was invited to teach at the Academy of Mons, a position he held for twenty five years some of which as Director of the Academy.

The work of Gustave Camus is held in many museums throughout Belgium including those at Brussels, Antwerp, Charleroi, Mons and Liege.

This particular example of his work dates to the mid-1950s and was included in a major retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work held at Charleroi’s Palais des Beaux Arts in 1974.

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