M HKA Ensembles

° 1938

Lives in Sint-Truiden (), born in Tienen ().

*'Nature is as interesting to me as art'* - Hugo Duchateau After training in glass painting at the Provincial Higher Institute for Architecture and Applied Arts in Hasselt, Hugo Duchateau starts working as an independent visual artist. In 1976 he co-founds *Research Group* with other artists including Vincent Van den Meersch, Dré Sprankenis and Jos Jans; this was a cooperative project where the quest for innovation in art stood central. Glass art is Duchateau’s first love, though painting is often his point of departure in a wide-ranging oeuvre. As an artist, he investigates the possibilities of painting on canvas, often by stepping away from this traditional surface and opting for space instead. The instruments involved with the practice of painting and drawing – like paint and brushes – figure as main protagonists in his work. Gradually this bent for space creation will disappear. In the 1980s Duchateau returns to the flat canvas. Here, the pencil stroke acquires a three-dimensional quality, whereby its autonomy and materialization become clarified. In recent work, Duchateau again confronts the viewer with installations where integration and exploration of the materials employed are essential, and where nature and the environment are focus of a consciousness-raising process. The work of Duchateau is very poetic, but then always with a humorous note. For Duchateau, painting is mostly a work of labour, because re-painting old works is a possibility as well. He re-works old paintings, often giving rise to new works that always fit within his painterly oeuvre. View more work by Hugo Duchateau? Click [here](http://www.hugoduchateau.net/)