About the Artist

Antoine DUC, born April 10, 1932 in Valence (France), grew up in Chambery (France), and studied at the Champittey high school in Lausanne (Switzerland).

In 1949, he entered the academy of Beaux-Arts at Grenoble, where he studied three years.

In 1953, with J. M. Pinot, Antoine DUC restored the Saint Hughes church at Chartreuse.

In 1954, Antoine DUC met his wife, also a painter, who signs her paintings under the name "Eugenie".

Antoine DUC then spent three years in the French military. Returning to civilan life in 1957, Antoine DUC participated in numerous group art expositions, notably "The Young Great Masters of Today" -- "Salon of the Young Painters" -- "Salon of Independent Artists", in the citis of Caen, Amiens and Metz.

He also participated in numerous group exhibitions outside of France-- England, Germany, Switzerland, etc.

In 1970, Antoine DUC exhibited his paintings at Yvoire (in the Savoie region of France), then at Gisors where he met the renowned painter Dado, and a close friendship developed.

Since 1973, he has collaborated with the prestigious Galerie J .-C. Bellier of Paris. Some of his one-man exhibitions:

Galerie Jean-Claude Bellier- Paris

Galerie Van Dormael - Bruxelles

Château de Thoiry

Galerie Art Moderne Paris

Numerous exhibitions in France and around the world have followed, including Belgium, Switzerland, the United States, Germany, Venezuela.

Published Reviews by Art Critics

"The Last of the Magicians"

``Cubism had its second generation, having realized the ultimate consequences of the "plastic revolution" of Picasso, Graque and Gris -- and notably in the richness of the palette -- and today surrealism is in its second generation of practitioners, who don't try to follow a trend but rather return to the themes that Tanguy, Dali, Ernst discovered, creating a dream-like world, sumptuous and of infinite depth.

If Antoine Duc would have a master he would choose Jérome Bosch and Lautréamont, that is to say for his deepest inspiration--and it must be admitted that he is unafraid to surpass the greatest among them.

Duc much reflected on his art, dominating his profession the way a virtuoso practices the more-difficult left hand so as to attain perfection. His friendship with the painter Dado has influenced his manner of posing his subjects, but he knew to resist being influenced too much, retaining just those elements which serve his prodigious dreamer's temperament and hunger for mystery. Duc has, certainly, his stable of fantastic beasts and familiar myths, but his essential virtue is the force -- his élan -- which drives him to pose his subjects without ornamentation and render the heart of his anguish.

He speaks to us in a marvellous language of distant shores from where he brings us treasures of the night, escorted by his monsters, dominated by his high obsessions of which we are invited to decode the secret. He develops his theater of fantasms for us the way a high priest delivers a black mass. I think that for him the devil exists; the the laws of esoterism reign. Even his palette has the essence of sulphur and the seeds of hell.

The specialists (and yes, surrealism has also, it is said, its poetic professionals) have perhaps criticised his absence of improvisation, his apparent submission to the grand tradition of the perfectly executed painting, its outlines cleanly drawn. I find to the contrary that the realism of Duc is the quality that links the concept with the form. He gives us little seeds perfectly polished and diamonds that are only more beautiful for having been worked over in detail, like the great masters of the classic era of surrealism. I think that this movement--which hasn't advanced much since the death of Breton--has just discovered a new great master to illuminate the treasures of the underwater grottoes of our imagination. Duc is one of the princes of the new wave of surealism, no doubt about it. And his poetry has not stopped enchanting us. Watch as he opens for us new magic doors, of which he is the last and the most talented of sorcerors. ``

--Andre Parinaud.
 

DUC: not as he at first appears

``Duc is a painter, a dark prince who paints in his tower to better express his "inner thoughts" (title of one of his paintings) where some planet explodes in the darkness.

For there is the night in the mysteries of Duc.

Each work poses a question through its bizarre situations, a shotgun wedding with reality.

With a strict chromatic code, an admirable technique, a chiseled form that Ucello could not have surpassed, a nearly permanent monochrome effect, Duc astonishes and marvels us as much by his skilled technique as by his visionary imagination.

His purposefulness of line and his mental discipline to go "beyond" are themselves symbolic of this great talent. ``


--Guy VIGNOHT