Guillaume Le Roy - Large Etching "How Closer to the Poet" - E.A. copy - pencil signed

• Name variations Guillaume Leroy, Guillaume le Roy, Guillaume Louis Le Roy,

Former teacher at the Kampen art academy. Le Roy went to the Rietveld Academy (School of Applied Arts Amsterdam, department of free graphics) in 1958 and specialized in drawing and graphics. After graduating, he moved to France in 1962. There he met the Dutch painter Bram van de Velde and the Italian sculptor Giacometti. know, which influence him permanently. In this way Van de Velde learns that it is about personal experiences, not about reality. Back in Amsterdam in 1963 Le Roy can start all over again. Often inspired by poetry, e.g. Baudelaire, Lautreamont, Bert Schierbeek, he makes small series of woodcuts or etchings in large format, mostly for bibliophile editions. Le Roy does not make illustrations for their poetry, they form the starting signal for his own imagination. The unspeakable He believes that making things visible is the most important task of an artist. Although he had a colourful period, black and white always remained the most important to him, later enlivened by a small element in a primary colour. Le Roy is a passionate and very original graphic artist with a small audience, which is probably related to his lyrical-abstract and mystical attitude, a kindred spirit of HN Werkman and H. van Kruiningen. "I live in a dream world of fantasies, with my spiritual underworld as a source. My work is about what you evoke, not what you create," Le Roy says about himself in his biography. To depict the unspeakable, he uses two tools in his woodcuts: wooden planks - often from demolition sites - and dark colours. By using weathered planks, he gets the structure of the wood onto paper. About his use of colour, he says: "Ultimately, I look for of course the light. But without mystery there is no clarity, without questions there are no solutions. Whoever seeks the daylight cannot do without the awareness of the darkness of the night." In his art, the essential characteristics of graphics are increasingly pronounced. In this way, he has returned the etching and the woodcut to their origins: the exploration of light in black and white and the search for 'colour' in tone and the contrast. His work is penetrating and monumental in rising abstract forms. (source: Kunstbus)