Igor SWINGEDAU "Symbolist scene" painting oil on canvas

Igor Swingedau studied with Claude Lyr at the Académie royale des beaux-arts in Brussels, where he also pursued a career as a painter, but above all as an engraver.
Trained at the Academies of Ixelles (until 1956) and Brussels (1957-1961), where he was appointed assistant for Claude Lyr's engraving course (until 1965), he taught graphic arts at the Academies of Ixelles (from 1966) and Brussels (engraving, from 1970).
A neo-figurative painter, draftsman and aquafortist of landscapes, interiors and still lifes, he joined the magic realism movement in the late 1950s. In his paintings, he offers dreamlike, mineral and sometimes rather austere views that bring him closer to Jean Ransy and, of course, Claude Lyr. Mirrors play an important role in his interiors. His fantastical landscapes explore the fine line between figuration and abstraction.
A post-symbolic atmosphere and a certain mysticism, sometimes naà¯ve, also characterize his work (see also Jean Ransy, Claude Lyr, William Degouve de Nuncques...).
He paints numerous landscapes and scenes of an often motionless, rather hieratic life, a few portraits (always diverted from a realism that remains ambiguous) and transposes, for example, a fantastic climate inspired by well-known sites in Venice, Bruges...
The rare "characters" are always silhouettes in a frozen world; "objects" and dreamlike views are always dominant.