(b Antwerp, April 29, 1920; d Brussels, Sept 19, 1993).
Belgian writer, painter, collagist, draughtsman and sculptor. He left school at the age of 14 and in 1937 met Magritte, and the Belgian writers Louis Scutenaire (1905–87) and Paul Nougé (1895–1967), through whom he soon became drawn into the Surrealist movement. Though largely involved with writing poetry and essays, like many Surrealists he also produced collages, such as La Traversée du rêve (1938–45; Paris, Gal. Isy Brachot). Also in 1937 he participated in his first Surrealist exhibition, Surrealist Objects and Poems, organized by E. L. T. Mesens at the London Gallery in London. From 1940 to 1941 he was held prisoner in Germany. On his return to Belgium he founded the publishing house L’Aiguille Aimantée, which issued Paul Eluard’s Moralité du sommeil in 1941. In 1943 he published the first monograph on Magritte and two years later took part in the important exhibition of Belgian Surrealism at the Galerie La Boëtie in Brussels. In ...
