Walter Swennen: poet, painter, professor

The gallery that represented him described him as “one of the most influential painters of Belgium”, but the Brussels-born Walter Swennen (1946-2025) was a man of many talents. A look back on a remarkable career and life.

Walter Swennen was the second of six children, born in the Brussels commune of Forest on 27 February 1946. He started learning how to paint when he was just a teenager, in high school, but it would be much later before the world came to know Swennen as a painter.

Initially, this remarkable Belgian enrolled at the Université Saint-Louis to study philosophy, but that wasn’t quite his dada (an expression in Dutch-speaking Belgium to indicate it wasn’t his favourite activity or field). Instead, he mastered the craft of engraving at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. Swennen eventually studied psychology at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) and earned his degree in 1973.

Even before this venture, monsieur Swennen was something else entirely, a poet, in the mid-1960s, on the tail end of the Beat Generation that inspired him. He also found himself in the Dada manifesto (hence the expression above) and saw a friend in Marcel Broodthaers, a tremendously influential Belgian poet turned visual artist. Swennen’s poem Balade pop is dedicated to him.

It was a different decade altogether when Walter Swennen, in the meantime a professor of psychoanalysis at the Ecole de Recherche Graphique (ERG), really sank his teeth into what he would become most known for. In 1981, he secured his first solo exhibition as a painter, and two group exhibitions highlighting contemporary painters followed in 1982.

The eagle-eyed observer will notice that his name is rather Flemish-sounding while he went to French-speaking institutions. That is because when he was five, his parents decided that the family would only speak French. This fact has had an influence on a lot of his work.

But what really typifies Swennen’s work? In his own words, “there is no meaning, there is only the secret. And the secret is to be found in the creation of art.” His experience was that “things come from outside, you just start to paint and then you have to react to it.” In this sense, his approach was not unlike that of the abstract expressionists. He believed in the total autonomy of the artwork and was of the opinion that art should be devoid of imposed meaning.

Swennen has exhibited not only in the biggest Belgian institutions but also in the United States, France, Germany and the Netherlands, as is befitting of an artist of his caliber. He will be missed.

Photo: Pauline Colleu