Guy Olivier - 'Smoking woman'

Original work by Guy Olivier 'Femme qui fume'
Dimensions: 37 x 25.5
Frame size: 48 x 30
Hand signed: Yes, lower right
Frame: Light wooden frame and passepartout
Date:1997
Technique:Mixed media (watercolor paint and Indian ink)

Few Dutch artists can express the French and French-speaking feeling of life as it exists among the Dutch and Belgians so vividly and accurately, or awaken that desire for it among our French neighbours to the north. Mediterranean so blue, so blue. The same feeling, that light-heartedness, that voluptuousness and that art of living of the South is brought to canvas by the Maastricht-born visual artist Guy Olivier. But not primarily sweet, sweet or as in a holiday brochure. With Guy Olivier it always manifests itself with an absurdist wink or with a grotesque exaggeration and almost always with a culinary reference or undertone: white arms of girls like boudins blancs, red pouty lips that have secretly already eaten the fraises-glaces sauce, pairs of eyes that rarely look in the same direction - the cleavage and rues d'amour are too deep for that, the ice cream coupes too creamy and seductive, and the company too diverse. You can't take your eyes off it. Of course, with such an overwhelming work (Guy Olivier certainly does not shy away from the large format and intense use of colour) you cannot avoid looking at examples, predecessors and possible sources of inspiration. And then you must think of the drawings of James Ensor in particular with the grotesque heads and carnivalesque costumes, the café scenes are related to those of Otto Dix and his round and egg-shaped heads also appear in the work of Georg Grosz. And of course Toulouse-Lautrec, as the visual chronicler of Parisian nightlife. But what distinguishes him from these artists, which is typical of Guy Olivier's work, is both his powerful tube-lining - he sometimes applies a number of powerful lines directly from the paint tube onto the layers of paint that give the whole a great dynamic and the use of paint in layers in a way that it looks like fondant. The interest of galleries and art lovers from home and abroad is great and his work has now been included in the collections of big names.