Cécile Miguel: Hypnotic and kaleidoscopic art retrospective at La Boverie in Liège

The singular artistic universe of 20th century Belgian artist Cécile Miguel is on colourful display at La Boverie in Liège until 18 August.

Some 100 paintings, collages, drawings and personal documents offer a unique opportunity to explore the creative world of an artist whose prolific career has largely remained overshadowed, despite her frequenting of artists such as Picasso.

The retrospective Cécile Miguel. Au creux des apparences is part of the modern and contemporary art museum’s mission to discover or re-discover Belgian artists, alongside its aim to present quality shows with an international focus.

It is staged alongside La Boverie’s exhibition Abstrait, a highly-accessible showcase of abstract works by Belgian and foreign artists. The intriguing complicity between the two exhibitions includes their spotlight on overlooked works and women artists.

Cécile Miguel (1921-2001) was born Lise Piérard in the Hainaut town of Gilly. She eschewed notoriety and shunned the art market in pursuit of her own personal creative journey. As a visual artist, she employed multimedia in her works, which are exhibited here in chronological series.

Collage prints in searing bright colours provide an instant immersion into her creative style. The self-effacing artist employs a bold palette, fantastical forms and multiple techniques to express her style.

From art brut to abstraction, figurative art and surrealism, Miguel draws on nature as an inspiration as well as her own highly-cultivated background to interrogate the human condition and society from a determinedly anti-conformist viewpoint.

Another series, oil paintings of vegetation, switch to more muted hues and reveal delicate brushwork, while a later collection of collages on wood take a swipe at the bourgeoisie in caricature figurative works. They adopt a flattened yet striking graphic style.

The Psychoscopie series – the title is a contraction of psychology and the imaging technique fluoroscopy – explores a darker world, letting loose imaginary torments. Miguel uses the surrealist painting technique of grattage to paint variations of the theme.

L’Âge d’or, là je dors are a series of large-format oils in vibrant colours, but this time presented in interweaving puzzle-like forms (pictured above) that create disrupted and distorted images. As well as recurring motifs, surrealism techniques persist in Miguel’s use of texts in her works.

Not only profuse, Miguel was talented in numerous technique. A section of the exhibition contains a selection of her textured painted collages (pictured) in which mask forms are depicted.

For Béatrice Libert, co-curator of the exhibition with Yves Namur, Miguel and her husband, the author, poet and critic André Miguel, were a cultured and very fusional couple. “They were of the hippy era and lived on the margins of society.”

It was in 1950 that they met Picasso when Miguel exhibited alongside the modern master and Joan Miró in a collective show, in which she received the Paul-Roux Prize for Young French Painting.  

After 20 years living in the Midi region of France, they returned to southern Belgium, where Miguel worked until arthritis forced her to abandon her paintbrushes. She continued to write thought until the end of her life.

Pointing to a self-portrait of the artist, Libert recalls how the artist typically adopted an unobtrusive as well as a self-derisory stance. Photos of Miguel in her Belgian home (pictured above) attest to a woman adept with irony but uncomfortable in the limelight.

This first retrospective in 40 years is housed in the spacious and light-filled interior of La Boverie’s contemporary wing overlooking the Meuse river. It is a fitting setting for such a hypnotic artist whose kaleidoscopic career is finally getting the public viewing it deserves.

Cécile Miguel. Au creux des apparences
Until 18 August
La Boverie
Liège

Photos: (main image) La clé de la ville est perdue 1968 ©Cécile Miguel, photo ©Gerald Micheels; Le demon pluriel 1971 ©Cécile Miguel, photo ©Marco Lavand Homme; La voix des ancetres 1967 ©Cécile Miguel, photo ©Marco Lavand Homme; Psychoscopie series 1965; L'age d'or la je dors ©Cécile Miguel, photo ©Gerald Micheels; Suc du silence no 4 1968 ©Cécile Miguel, photo ©Marco Lavand Homme; Cécile Miguel, photo Wolfgang Osterheld