Armand Silvestre was born in Liège, Belgium in 1921 and died on October 28, 2007 in the same city. Armand attended courses at the Academy of Fine Arts of Liège. He had as teachers, Georges Petit and Marceau Gillard.
His first works on paper, he realizes them at the end of the second war. The 40’s are influenced first and foremost by Georges Braque’s works in post-cubist still lifes and the cubist figurative paintings of Belgian painter Edgar Scauflaire, whom he in turn is influenced by dreamlike cubist expressionism, that Armand Silvestre is putting into his own style and creates a sort of Metaphisic close to Giorgio De Chirico but with a geometrization of forms in the middle of the 50’s and that turns towards at the end 50’s early 60’s towards lyrical abstraction with stains and zen clouds close to work of Hartung.
Armand Silvestre has affinities with the Apiaw (association for the artistic progress in Wallonia), but Silvestre does not belong to any art circles in the strict sense of the word; Like Jo Delahaut, Jean Rets and José Picon, he is one of those discreet painters who have built the history of abstract art * (ref. text by Alain Delaunois) gently and in the intimacy of their workshops.
After that, he will later go back to figuration and start a period moving towards post-impressionism, with scenes of city, parks and ponds, attracted by Liege and Paris which will become his subjects to prefer in parallel of a Photographer career.
The work of Armand Silvestre is eclectic and his influences intercedes with his styles, … in fact there is not a real logic and it reveals successively all these various contaminations of styles and art movements in which he is interested. His artworks flirt with Renaissance art, Impressionism, Cubism, Abstract Art … and even Chinese painting.
Extracts from a text by Alain Delaunois; Other source Blog: Christian Vancau and Yoannick Ysebaert
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