b. Hall, Belgium 1914-1990

"Painter of the Night"

It was Friday, March 15, 1968 at the Association Populaire Art et Culture (Popular Art and Culture Association).

"A vernissage unlike others. An exhibition unlike others: no crowd, a certain meditation and silence, and Leunens, the painter, who is presenting his work. Leunens, the painter? Or the sculptor? On the spot, you don't dare give your opinion: you are surrounded by large metal sheets with a suppressed, patinated and downy shine... No, although the three-dimensional temptation had to be subtle, Leunens remains a painter, however one of shy greatness, frankness and courage."

E.L.; " La nouvelle République", March 23-24, 1968. Fire and Metal

With the aide of the Leunens family and metalsmiths from the ArtMetal mail list, we have put together this web exhibition of Guillaume Leunens artwork. You will find that we have divided this exhibition into two parts. The first is a walk through gallery of individual black and white images of his metal on metal paintings. Each page has one modestly sized grayscale gif image with accompanying excerpts from reviews which he had during his lifetime. If you follow the show sequentially you will find a consistent flow between excerpts from the reviews. Note that each image is linked to a much larger and higher resolution jpeg image. Viewing the jpegs will allow you to appreciate the subtle gradations of black along with the detailed textures created from the application of various metals. An alternative to the sequential walk through is to go to the icon index of Leunens artwork. There you will find small icons with titles and links to all the art pieces in this exhibition.

The second part of this exhibition deals with the discovery process of Leunens "secret" techniques which are a hallmark for this mans artwork. I say "secret" because Guillaume guarded his techniques very well and never disclosed them to anyone during his lifetime. Not even to his son. However, Victor and his daughter Yoséline, have an interest in sharing Guillaume's art with the metalsmithing community and the art world . They have agreed to share all they know about his artwork and, with the aid of the ArtMetal mail list metalsmithing community, we will go through a process of "discovery" to see what materials he used and how the "Leunens Techniques" were applied.

The discovery section will contain all technical information which we have acquired and will be updated regularly until we come up with Guillaumes' "secrets" or until we give up. There are some expert metalsmiths on the ArtMetal mail list and believe me, if they can't figure it out, then Leunens "secrets" will remain secrets for ever. We hope that this will not be the case and will be sharing everything we find here at ArtMetal. So come back often and see what we have discovered.

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• View curated show sequentially
• View icon index of Leunens artwork
• Discovering the "secrets" of Leunens techniques and materials
• Guillaume Leunens Biography

Victor Leunens

3217 Rte. 220

St. Elie D'orford

P. Que. Cananda

JOB250

Phone: 819-565-8812

Fax: 819-5651358

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Copyright 1996 ArtMetal / Victor Leunens

ArtMetal Editor/Curator: enrique

Last Updated: 12/31/04