Roger Hebbelinck - Bruges - Ostend Gate

Pencil signed lower right.
Numbered 7/350 lower left.
Image size 19.5x24.5 cm. Sheet size 31x41 cm. Loose-leaf.
Roger Hebbelinck was a Belgian artist who was born in Brussels in 1912 and died there in 1987. He was a painter, etcher, watercolourist and filmmaker. He was educated at the Academy in Brussels under the direction of Bastien, Delville, Van Strydonck, Stevens and Mathieu and at the Academy in Elsene under the direction of Omer Dierckx. At the Academy of Brussels he was taught watercolour painting by I. van Mens and engraving by J. van Santen. He etched a large number of picturesque city corners in historical cities. He provided the etchings for the book Les Villages Illusoires by E. Verhaeren. As a filmmaker he made, among other things, the documentary La Naissance d'une Eau-forte which won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival and a documentary about the construction of the Atomium. As a visual artist, he set up an etching studio before the war in 1932 and etched many picturesque cityscapes in Belgium. He also etched and painted in watercolours in the Netherlands (Bergen op Zoom) and the south of France and Spain. His colour etchings, which he made after works by his colleagues V. de Saedeleer and A. Saverys, are also special. He signed these with the pseudonym "Belin". He often visited the studios of La Patte and L'Effort. In 1932 he started his own studio for graphics and printing etchings. He is best known for his hundreds of colour etchings, mostly village and cityscapes. He illustrated Les villages illusoires by Em. Verhaeren. He also worked under the pseudonym Belin. From the press: "As a meticulous observer, RH puts his whole soul into the representation of his subjects, which he manages to capture with great precision, but which also bear witness to a poetic vision. He masters his technique in an exemplary manner and thus connects with the tradition of etching practiced by Ensor and De Bruycker. His painting, however, leans towards post-symbolism, detached from the surrealist visual language. The entire oeuvre of RH shows that he is continually fascinated by human existence in general and the living environment with which the fate of the individual is connected in particular, and that can be both a city (Rome, Bruges) and the countryside or villages in Italy or Spain.” As a filmmaker, director of Naissance d'une eau-forte and in collaboration with E. Salu Atomium. Mentioned in Artists and Galleries 1997, in the fourth (2000) and fifth editions thereof (2004), BAS I and Two centuries of signatures of Belgian artists. (Source: Piron, Wikipedia).