As a conclusion

There are painters who stick to one formula, either abstract or figurative, until they work it out and until they ignore necessity and make the most of it shamelessly. You can recognize them at first sight and you end up abandoning them, as weariness quickly creeps over you. Other painters run after avant-garde as after a train: wham! They miss it and they fall flat on their paintbrush. Rare – so rare – are those who, like Georges Collignon, manage to take all the necessary steps, in accordance with their researcher’s nature, never satisfied and always in search of new dazzling discoveries in their art.
Bosquet, 1988

Collignon is a fabulous painter of popular pictures. This may be paradoxical for someone who around the 50ies-60ies became famous and was considered as one of our greatest abstract painters.
But not so paradoxical. Because Collignon’s abstract paintings were already magnificent pictures, vibrating scores where harmony took shape between composition and colours. Since then, Collignon has walked again step by step on the quite unusual way back to figurative painting. He found there some prestigious precursors, as the magnificent Italians of the Quattrocento, Pisanello or Uccello, postimpressionists as Bonnard and Viennese symbolists as Klimt.

But what is the weight of these too learned references? Collignon has his own style. Unique, recognizable, a master in his kingdom, with the right amount of humour and irony to titillate the spectator’s look. Under Collignon’s easy-going directness lies an anarchic side, making reality burst. But be careful! This painter at the top of his talent, who doesn’t always take himself seriously, puts the finishing touches to his work almost constantly near jubilation, as a meticulous craftsman: this can make one smile (is it acceptable?), or make one feel like coming back (is it reasonable?), or even make one happy (come on! Keep calm!) … At a time when so many “painters” think they have to impose their existential anxiety and technical poverty on us, Collignon bets on vitality, if not exuberance, and on the taste of perfect skill.
He is definitely unconventional. Why asking for more?

Georges Collignon died in Liège on February 5, 2002, at the age of 78.

Texts gathered by Willy LESUR, journalist.

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