Christian Dotremont. Painter - Poet

On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the poet and painter Christian Dotremont, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts and the Archives & Museum of Literature are devoting an exceptional exhibition to this Belgian artist. More than 120 works on paper bear witness to his graphic oscillation between writing and painting.


Christian Dotremont (1922-1979), a prominent post-war Belgian artist and co-founder of the CoBrA movement, was one of the first to use writing to create plastic art. His 'logograms', or grafic poems, emerge spontaneously from the meandering brush to produce an unprecedented form of artistic expression. The words that he impulsively lays down on paper seem to be animated by a spirit of their own and end up creating expressive compositions. Writing and painting truly merge and open a path to endless experimentations.

The exhibition, showing more than 120 works on paper, photographs, films and never-exhibited-before archive documents, sheds light on the great diversity of Dotremont's logograms.

Set foot in the artist's path and discover his wandering creative journey. Besides the logograms, the exhibition also includes a selection of 'word drawings' and 'four-handed works' created with artists such as Pierre Alechinsky, Asger Jorn, Serge Vandercam and Hugo Claus. Artworks by Henri Michaux, René Guiette, Jean Raine, Jules Lismonde and Jacques Calonne also interact with Dotremont's oeuvre.

The exhibition has benefited from exceptional loans from the King Baudouin Foundation, via the Dotremont Fund, which belongs to the Foundation. Pierre Alechinsky also contributed to this tribute exhibition, lending the museum never-before-seen works by Dotremont from his personal collection.