The artist
 

 

Juan Maria Bollé is a Flemish painter with Spanish roots on grandmother’s side. He is born in Vilvoorde, Belgium, in December 1958.

In 1985 he finished his studies at the St. Lucas Institute of Fine Arts in Brussels. Presently he is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Liedekerke.

During his studies he first explored drawing and black and white printmaking, with an emphasis on the etching technique. After his studies he focused on the medium of oil painting. Bollé’s first paintings grew out of the European figurative tradition and were based on classic disciplines such as the portrait, the nude, the still life and the landscape.

 

From 1985 till 1995 he had a few one-man exhibitions in Belgian art galleries and has been selected for several group exhibitions and art contests.

    

 

Since 1995 Bollé travelled through South-America, Africa and Asia. Those trips influenced his work profoundly. During a period of artistic crises, the artist destroys most of his paintings.

Bollé is searching for a new approach and chooses for a temporary artistic isolation. This results in a totally new style. Pure realistic iconography was banned and a more spiritual dimension took over.

His paintings not only try to express specific figurative characteristics but evoke the unchanging universal elements in an almost mystical sense.
 

 

 

Tension and contrast

Juan Maria Bollé’s art is characterised by contrasts and tensions.

Black and white figurative elements are completed with abstract colorfields. Thin ‘glacis technique’ is sometimes alternated with thick painted surfaces. Word – language – can be related with image.

Graphic techniques such as linoleum print, oxidised copper , silver and gold are combined with oil painting.

The use of gold leaves can be understood in a cultural historical context in which gold not had a purely material value, but also played an important spiritual and metaphysical role.

This combination evokes a scale of emotions : passion, loss, sensuality and decline are inevitable.
 

 

 

Composition and Color

The essence in Bollé’s recent works are a preference for well balanced compositions.

The spectator is bereft of a central focus. He is forced to scout the painting with his eyes and has to splinter the picture to embrace it.

The paintings consists of several figurative images and abstract elements.

The abstraction is a combination of hard edge monochrome colorfields, as well as more organic, colored structures. It evokes a mental space which has to be filled in by the spectator himself.

Working with fragments and the confrontation of black and white with color enables Bollé to search for an alienation towards the figurative. The confrontation with abstract colorfields intensifies this feeling.

The realistic fragments are common, but the global context and interpretation is complex. The paintings evokes a scale of associations and emotions, are often suggestive and characterised by a multiplicity of meaning. Therefore they transcend the realistic iconography.

The colors are made of delicate mixings, the brushstrokes are often visible, the surfaces are thin painted coatings one over another.

As Bollé says : ‘By painting with a subtle, almost cool distance, I try to avoid all pathetic feelings. I am fascinated by the unspeakable, the slumbering desire. I try to visualise the invisible. The emptiness, the non-painted, is as important as the painted. The dialogue with tradition is indispensable.’