Born in 1926 at Ixelles (Belgium) Odette Collon lives in Brussels.
She studied painting and sculpture with Ferdinand Schirren in 1942 and later with Louis Ramah.
It was Louis Ramah who introduced her to the Jeune Peinture Belge, "Young Belgian Painting", an association founded in the post
40-45 war era by art lovers to promote Belgian artists.
Famous names like Marc Mendelson, Louis Van Lint , Jan Cox, Gaston Bertrand, Mig Quinet, and Georges Collignon
were part of this "association".
From then , she exhibited regularly with the Jeune Peinture Belge at the Gallery Apollo, Galerie de France in Paris and also,
in Stockholm to name a few.
She was a good friend of Pierre Alechinsky who followed his own path with the Cobra Painting Movement.
Some years later, one of her paintings was bought by the internationally acclaimed surrealistic painter, Paul Delvaux,
who fell in love with Odette Collon's works.
After the dissolution of the Jeune Peinture Belge, Odette chose to produce solo exhibitions throug Belgium's major towns
and cities as :
Brussels,Antrwep, Leuven, Grimbergen, and so on...
oDETte collon around 1950
Selected highlights of Odette's career:
- 1963:Nominated for the Jeune Peinture Belge Award
- 1990: Solo exhibition in Lineart Gand, coinciding with the publication of a monograph on the artist's work.
- 1992 : Famous collective exhibition "Retrospective de la Jeune Peinture"organised by Credit Communal (now Dexia)
in Brussels.
- 1999 : a Striking exhibition at the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp, showcasing female painters
over four centuries from 1500 to 1950 !
- November 2001 : Collective exhibition organised by Group 2 Gallery
- March 2002 : Major solo exhibition at the "Fondation Pour L'art Belge Contemporain."
- May 2002 : Solo exhibition in Stedelijk Museum of Hoogstaten.
- More recently : Odette Collon has exhibited from her twenties and still continues at the age of 82.
Her most recent exhibition took place at the very core of Brussels, at Mandala Gallery, in October 2008.
Odette Collon 2003
In the early period, Odette Collon was strongly influenced by Picasso and Matisse.
She then moved from figurative to the abstract.
She plays with light,colours and matter.
The luminosity of her work is like a mantra.
Her passion for tinctures and hues took her to distant shores in the seventies (India, Nepal, Ladakh, Morocco, Algeria,
Thaïland, Syria, Israel, Cuba, and so on ...)
In her early period, she makes use of scraps and discarded items of everyday life.
As she says herself : "Matter becomes inchoate and disembodied ...timeless like poetry".
Now in her eighties, Odette serenely contemplates the world that she has so well recreated in her paintings.
Wife of the late Charles Godefoid, one of the six main founders of Belgian National Television,
Odette is the proud mother of Catherine and Yvon Godefroid.
Some books, websites and dictionairies devoted to Odette Collon :
La jeune peinture belge
Dictionnaire des artistes
plasticiens de Belgique des XIXe et XXe siècles
Paul Piron (2volumes)
Editions Art in Belgium , 2003
Couleurs de notre temps
La peinture en Belgique au XXème siècle
Par René Dalemans
Artis Bruxelles 2002
A chacun sa
grâce
Femmes artistes en Belgique et aux Pays-Bas 1500-1950
Ludion Flammarion
Catalogue de l'exposition tenue au
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen
du 17-10- 1999 au 16-1-2000
Art belge au XXe siècle
Musée de Louvain la Neuve
Catalogue publié aux Editions Racine
Collection de la Fondation pour l'Art Belge contemporain.
Serge Goyens de Heusch
La Jeune Peinture Belge en 1948
aux côtés de
Gaston Bertrand,
Louis Van Lint, Anne Bonnet,
Alechinsky,
Mig
Quinet, etc.
Odette Collon alongside with Fabiola and
Baudouin I, Queen and King of Belgium around 1980
Please visit the galleries
Back to the French site
Thanks to Sarita Pulton (Mauritius), Franck Morgan
(USA) and Beatrice Collon, my dear she-cousin (South Africa), for their so precious help
in this english translation.
