Rodolphe Ubac 1910 - 1985

Rodolphe Raoul Ubac was born in Malmédy, a Belgian territory, in 1910.

Throughout his artistic career Ubac’s style developed from Surrealism into abstract expressionism. His later works have an energy and movement brought about by his gestural painterly style.

Ubac first studied to become a forest ranger & from 1927 until 1930 travelled extensively on foot through France, Belgium Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

He lived in Paris, Belgium, Germany and Austria, where his studies led him into literature. He then discovered the surrealism of Man Ray and Max Ernst, and decided to try his hand at photography. In 1934 he published a book of photographs and poems with Camille Bryen. In 1936 Ubac became acquainted with engraving, working in Hayter’s studio in Paris. From this time up until1939, Ubac worked closely with the group of Surrealist artists in Paris and his photos were often published in the famed Minotaur magazine.

At the outbreak of World War Two, Ubac sought refuge in Carcassonne and started to produce drawings. Back in Paris in 1942, he befriended some poets such as Jean Lescure, Raymond Queneau and Paul Eluard and provided six photos for the illustration of Lescure’s L’Exercice de la pureté. From then on, Ubac produced large ink drawings and took part in the activities of the ‘Main à Plume’ group, a collective that strove to perpetuate the spirit of Surrealism. 1943 marked his first exhibition in Paris, a collection of photos and drawings. Ubac gave up on his photographic activities 2 years later in order to devote himself to the production of drawings and gouaches.

1946 saw Ubac exhibiting in three exhibitions, London, Brussels and Paris. The same year he began to engrave tiles, and then went on to paint, though he preferred tempera to oils. In 1950 he exhibited his engraved tiles, and carving techniques, as well as his tempera’s. After befriending Jean Bazaine, Ubac turned towards abstraction giving a priority to perception and creation. He produced vertical or horizontal checker-boards that were seldom coloured, with large black patches using various pretexts regarding their significance.

Until 1955, his paintings tended to express a will for change. That year, he produced a painting containing large tile fragments and painted a similar work a year later.

However it was not until 1966 that Ubac decided to show works marrying paintings and low-relief effects, which included a plastic vocabulary implying some conceived organisation. Ubac was then painting as if he had been carving a sculpture creating furrows and stratified zones as if he had been striving to be in contact with the earth and its soil inside some kind of architecture.

Ubac took part in many important exhibitions from 1953 in Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, France, Brazil, Germany, the U.S, Canada, England, Japan and South America.

Ubac also produced many architectural integrations such as a tombstone for the de Chambure family in 1955, a wall made of tiles in Pittsburgh in 1957, a mosaic and tile wall in Evian, stained glass works for several churches, mural mosaics and tapestries.

This quite secret artist, who was awarded the Carnegie Prize in 1953, once said that he had tried to link the human body with stones in order to understand our nakedness. He died in 1984.