Prosper DE TROYER (1880-1961) - Lot 364

Prosper DE TROYER (1880-1961) Unidentified portrait. Pastel. Signed. 18 x 12.5 cm. Note: Born in Saint-Nicolas in 1880, Prosper De Troyer trained at the Saint-Luc school in Oostakker before working in the studios of Van Biesbroeck, Matthias and De Pauw in Ghent, where he discovered restoration and portraiture. A pupil of painter Willem Rogier at the Mechelen Academy, he met Rik Wouters and Alfred Ost, where his work, initially marked by realism and the influence of Eugène Laermans and Jacob Smits, evolved towards neo-impressionism, then Brabant Fauvism during the First World War. A member of the Doe Stil Voort circle, he rubbed shoulders with Félix De Boeck and Victor Servranckx. In contact with Paul van Ostaijen, whose portrait he painted, he then opened up to the Futurism of Marinetti, who invited him to exhibit in Florence. Around 1920, influenced by Malevich, he turned to geometric abstraction and created Le Signal, a visual manifesto of emancipated Cubism. Returning to figurative painting, he developed a personal expressionism inspired by the New Objectivity, drawing on biblical and family themes. A member of the De Meivisch group in the 1940s, he remains a singular figure of Flemish modernism, oscillating between spiritual commitment and the quest for pure art...