Raoul UBAC
1910–1985, Belgium/France

The painter-sculptor Raoul Ubac was born in 1910 in Malmédy (Ardennes, Belgium). He went to school there, then settled down in Paris in 1930. He joined La Sorbonne (Paris) to follow studies of letters, but changed his way and decided to frequent the Art Academies of Montparnasse. He discovered little by little his vocation for the art.
He saw surrealists regularly and often participated in the exhibitions of this group between 1934 and 1940. Ubac liked the photography; he contributed with Camille Bryen to the realization of a work of poetry, went regularly from 1935 till 1938, to the Atelier 17 of Stanley William Hayter where he learnt the engraving and associated this technique to the photography. His art is deliberately non-representational.
Ubac participated in very numerous collective exhibitions. Regularity, from 1951, the Gallery Maeght did exhibitions on his work. This gallery published engravings and lithographs of the artist. The review "Minotaure" published his photos-reliefs (solarisation). His "burnings" developped his art towards the lyric abstraction. He was member of the Cobra-group.
Raoul Ubac’s commitment in his art is total, almost religious; his way got simplified, finding little by little the very pure way of the primitive arts. Meditative, the artist said in an interview: «I would wish a state of innocence which would reflect through the work the magnificence of the world ».
In 1945, Ubac discovered the slate and created imprints where sculpture and engravings seemed to harmonize. Lines were pure, the works had a mystic character. In 1968, were organized retrospectives in France (Paris) and in Belgium (Charleroi, Brussels). Ubac created wall decorations, boxes for the tapestry, illustrations of numerous works, stained glasses, from monumental realizations to the size of a postage stamp.

Source: http://www.mchampetier.com/biography-Raoul-Ubac.html