The patient Quest

Although the work of Jean-Pierre Guynelly Maes has a subtle refinement and the identifiable image is the source of countless hidden attendances, it may be good to stop for a while and to class the past evolution in same clearly defined stages.

Besides what can be seen at first sight, provided people look on very attentively and try to start a dialogue, it may not be forgotten that Jean-Pierre is a link and feels himself as a bearer of a whole lot of cultural values. He descends from a family of artists who have not been able to realize themselves plastically. Up to now he is - strictly speaking - the only one who could be quite taken up with this never fulfilled dream, apart from studies at the Local Academy and the St. Lucas Institute and at present as a teacher of monumental art at the latter Institute.

On the other hand, he has been educated in a sphere of respect for a number of important cultural and ethical values. Both elements cannot be found that simple in his drawings and paintings, but they farm his background, they nourish the inspiration and the courage to ask questions ever and ever again to find the readiness to forget the previous obtainings for a while.

Evolution

The stages of his evolution seem to be clear enough although his work shows large zones where the unavoidable interferences take place. These stages can be summarized in this way:

playful scenes, baroque figures, geometrical style, lyrical abstraction, a come-back to figures and finally the shock with reality or, in other words, with the doors of perception.

Seen from another point of view we could say: a widespectrum reaction, the linear domination and a consciously limited colouring, a consequently extended study of a single thought in which colour starts playing a part, the coming to the front of composition and the return to figure afterwards with the obtaining this time that colour and line start to agree very well.

Let us come closer to the point.

In the war of reaction against an existing academism and the taste of same art-lovers, he starts building up playful works, ensembles of which the components can be transposed, up-to-date persons who make you think of the granulating of a photograph, which is still painstakingly practised by same present-day artists. This was only a short and rather unimportant prelude, a finger exercise.

At the end of 1969, after a two-year lucidity, the artist unfolds in a sphere characteristic for him. Free from all «isms» or tendencies for success he wants to paint and draw in an idealizing way. In a baroque way, bath formally and to the contents, he is on the look-out for the source of all expression, for the secret language of expression without missing one single stage: line, tonality, painting in itself.

In this way, he takes up a position diametrical against the artistical tendencies in which concrete things, banality, monstrosity and de cline are in the foreground. He tries to capture his own identity, his joy and amazement for the things that surround him. A lot of problems of picturesqueness and of expressiveness are put on that basis.

Primarily he restricts himself to two important themes : horse and horseman, two dynamic symbols and next to that the scenery as a rest in which can be experimented enthusiastically with line, tonality and depth. At the same time he affirms himself as an amazing virtuoso who reflects unvoluntarily the classic masters.

Right from the beginning, he owns what others try to acquire during a lifetime. He restricts himself to black and white till 1974, when he meets Monique who marries him shortly afterwards. Other tonalities originate in the same way as his inner life enriches. In the first place lines were ravelled out, now the shades appear.

But that is not sufficient. Consciously he breaks with his baroque period and he wants to ask other questions concerning composition and the ravelling out of a datum, concerning the dialogue between shades, harmony of  farms, affinities in a same space, rhythm in itself, abstraction, analytical defiguration, styling and geometrical interpretation.

One single theme : two dancing women dissolving themselves in slender farms of rhythm, in a tight geometry.

We are in the middle of 1975. Basically it concerns plastic phenomena such as : line, farm, tonalities as such, type area, level, composition and texture.

Almost at the same time the drawer becomes more and more a painter. About 1977 the geometrical trial empties itself into a pure lyrical abstraction.

After 79 Jean-Pierre returns to figuration. By way of same works that enable him to deepen the richness of the pasting techniques he creates a recognizable picture decorated with the knowledge of the analysis of farm and contents, with the knowledge of a number of inexpressible subtilities.

As mentioned before, his surrounding plays an essential part.

He observes how his little daughter Evy discovers the world; the world of the grown-up and their buildings ; the world of toys. He sees how the child opens the doors of perception one by one, and he paints this while getting even with his farmer themes.

In that way this new reality is a source of emotions and experiences seized by the artist, although he sees knowledge and skill as necessary obtainings from the beginning, enriched by his earnest asking for the essence and the answers he has found, and which he translated enthusiastically in works of art of great value. 

Hugo Brutin