Mosaic Head
Henry de Waroquier
HENRY DE WAROQUIER, 1937. OIL UNDER GLASS.
Studies of architecture and mythology shifted the young de Waroquier away from a career in biology and towards one in art. From the latter, he learnt of Greek art, and its foundational idea that man existed at the centre of the universe. From the former, the ability and power to shape that universe, to respect it through the act of creation and the values that contributions to its landscape have in the right hands. As a child he had spent hours at the Natural History Museum of France, and was drawn to the minerals and fossils that seemed to speak of a unknown world hidden from public view; it was unsurprising then, that as he began to create images it was ones that spoke to a past, unknowable and often created world. His paintings combined the surreal imagery of the unconscious with the historical mediums of popular imagination, combining in a gentle cohesion that seems to transcend time.