Robert Detheux (1932–2010) Forceps “on Se Tue à Vivre,” 2009 — Framed Surrealist Drawing

Robert Detheux (1932–2010) – Forceps – “On se tue à vivre” Series, 2009

Work Details

• Artist: Robert Detheux (Brussels 1932 – Tournai 2010)
• Title: Forceps – “On se tue à vivre” series

• Date: 2009 (signed and dated lower right “Detheux 2009”)

• Technique: Red chalk drawing and mixed media on paper, with highlights of white and expressive textural work

• Dimensions: 42 × 32 cm

• Signature: Signed and dated on the front, lower right, “Detheux 2009”

• Series: On se tue à vivre

• Sold: Framed

• Condition: Excellent

• Provenance: From the artist’s studio collection (Sr Fine Art collection)

This powerful and deeply moving drawing from 2009 is part of the series “On se tue à vivre .” An infant, depicted with great anatomical precision and raw emotion, lies on his back and reaches out with his arms toward an open, torn, and organic form floating above him. This structure, at once a womb and a wound, contains other infant forms intertwined in a vision that is both nascent and deadly.

The line is edgy, almost surgical, blending the tenderness of the baby’s body with the visceral horror of the form looming over it. The white highlights accentuate the tension between light and darkness, between life and violence. Here, Detheux explores, with rare intensity, the themes of birth, primal suffering, and the struggle to exist.

“Forceps” is a work that is both surreal and deeply human, where the boundary between the medical, the poetic, and the nightmarish blurs. A rare and powerful drawing, characteristic of the artist’s late period, in which he pushes graphic expression to its peak.

Artist’s Biography
Born in Brussels in 1932 and passed away in Tournai in 2010, Robert Detheux was a singular and major figure in postwar Belgian Surrealism. A multiple winner of the Prix Jeune Peinture Belge (1953, 1954, and 1971) and a graduate of the Institut Saint-Luc, he taught graphic arts at the Académie de Tournai until 1996 while developing a deeply personal and independent body of work.

His work explores the boundaries of the body, metamorphosis, dreams, and matter. Through expressive graphic techniques, superimposed lines, rubbings, and a rich variety of textures, he creates hybrid figures where the human and the animal, the visible and the invisible, meet in a poetic and sometimes unsettling tension.

The works from his late period (the 2000s), with their spectral portraits and chimeras, demonstrate great graphic freedom and a newfound intensity. Today, these drawings are particularly sought after by collectors for their modernity, their expressive power, and their ability to embody the artist’s deepest questions about identity and transformation.