Roger Somville

Mural painting, aimed as it is as the widest possible audience, was a natural choice for Somville to make. His work was to range from tapestry, of which Le triomphe de la paix (80m/ 861 sq. ft), is doubtless the most well-known, to mural, which include the extraordinary work Notre temps (600m/ 6,500 sq. ft.) at the Hankar metro, and the mural at the University of Louvain la Neuve of the theme qu’est-ce qu’un intellectuel?,(410m/4/1,330 ft), which he realized with the Collectif d’art public which he founded in 1980. His desire to create found expression in paintings which can be by turn wildly violent or strict and austere. In his drawings and etchings – both techniques which he used with masterly strength and charm – he could be satirical and ironic.

Somville's work is to be found in numerous museums in Belgium (the Moderne Art Museum in Brussels), and abroad (Mexico, Dresde, Faenza, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, Sofia, Paris and Lund). Among the various important prizes he has been awarded is the "Prix de le Critique" with Hans Bellmer, (1968–69).

Among the collective exhibitions in which Somville's work has appeared are the Mostra Internationale di Bianco e Nero at Lugano (1960), the Biennale Internationale d’art at Venice (1962), the Biennale Internationale de la tapisserie at Lausanne (1962 and 1965), figuration et défiguration, at the Hedendaagse Kunst Museum in Ghent (1964), the Salon de mai, in Paris (1977), L’art belge depuis (1945), at the Musée des Beaux-Arts André Malraux, Le Havre (1982), then Salon International d’art, at Basle (1985), and other exhibitions including Amsterdam, Utrecht, Antwerp, Ostend, Ljubljana, Frechen, Rijeka, Heidelberg, Venise and Paris.

He wrote the manifestos of the Realist Movement in 1958 and 1966 and developed thinking in his two books:

His sources are to be found in the work of the great masters and the giants epic paintings, among others Rubens, Goya, Gericault and Picasso (whom he met in 1951). Among his friends were Siqueiros, Guttuso, Pignon, Lorjou and Delvaux.

His work as a painter, théoretician, lecturer and activist and his efforts for peace (he represented Belgium on the World Peace Council) were completed by his teaching life. At the Academy of Watermael-Boitsfort, which has become renowned under his direction, he trained numerous artists, independent of any artistic dogmatism. He directed the school from 1947 to 1986.

In 1946, he created the Centre de Rénovation de laTapisserie de Tournai with his friends Edmond Dubrunfaut and Louis Deltour and also the group Forces murales. In 1951, he founded atelier de la céramiquede Dour with his wife, Simone Tits.

Roger Somville (Schaerbeek, 13 November 1923 – Tervuren, 31 March 2014) was a modern Belgian painter. · He defended realism against modern abstract art, which he believed de-humanize human beings.

Born in Brussels in 1923, Somville lost his father, a worker in marquetry, at an early age. He and his mother faced a precarious material existence. His uncle, a lithographer and early Marxist, was a source of ideological influence. He took drawing lessons at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (1940–1942), and then went to The Higher National school for Architecture and the Decorative Arts of Brussels, (in the architect atelier Lucien François' atelier). It was here that he would meet the painter Charles Counhaye who was to show him the way to expressive and monumental art (1942–1945).