Arthur DUPAGNE (1895-1961) - "Young Mangbetu".

Charcoal and Pastel Drawing
Circa 1920
Signed lower right
Dimensions: Sight: 55 x 44 cm

Biography :
Arthur DUPAGNE (1895-1961)
Belgian school

Arthur Dupagne was born in Liège on December 13, 1895, and would have begun sculpting at the age of nine, but his parents, unhappy with an artistic career, forced him to pursue technical studies, and he obtained a degree in mechanics, electricity and mining. On the strength of his success, and despite family opposition, the young Dupagne took evening classes in sculpture at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Liège.

He won first prize in every class he attended, completing an eight-year course in just four years.
He then worked in Liège in his father's wrought-iron workshop for four years, but devoted his spare time to sculpture.
He exhibited his academic works at the 1924 Triennial Salon. His training as a technician enabled him to combine rigor and precision with his artistic sensibility.

The family business ran into difficulties, and Arthur Dupagne had to support his wife and young daughter. So, at the age of twenty-one, he went to Africa as an engineer for a mining company.

On June 6, 1927, he embarked alone on his first mission.
He worked as an engineer for the Société Internationale Forestière et Minière du Congo at Tshikapa, in Tshorkwé country, where he exploited the diamond fields discovered there in 1910.
At the same time, he studied the ancestral statuary art of the Tshorkwe (Batshock or Kioto), Mumpende and Bassala tribes.

He also casts a passionate artistic eye on African anatomy and gestures. He depicts men and women in their nudity, supple and muscular.

He abandons an academic point of view in favor of powerful, realistic sculpture, choosing subjects around him in their everyday actions.

His preferred working material is clay. Unfired, his clay sculptures were often drilled by termites. To preserve his pieces, he used plastiline and plaster, which he took with him on his second mission.

On his return, he used the many sketches he had made during his stay to create works in bronze, wood, stone and marble.

In 1935, after 8 years of expatriation on the African continent, he completed his third mission for the mining company, returned to Belgium and presented his work in a gallery, an exhibition that was a great success.
He then devoted himself exclusively to his art.

Paris International Exhibition in 1937, Water Exhibition in Liège and New York International Exhibition in 1939, Knight of the Order of the Crown in 1940.