Lady Mirror Painting

‘THERE IS beauty in simplicity’. That is the belief of Fra Dehele (real name, Louis Duval), a French artist. And two things fuel that belief. One is a burning desire to correct the false picture of Africa being painted abroad by foreigners. Another is the need ‘to place on record through painting, a society of vitality and vibrancy before it is submerged by the plastic, steel and concrete of the consumable society’. Born in Paris in 1939, Dehele was educated at the ‘College Estienne des Arts Graphiques’, where he took courses in typography, illustration and graphic design for the printing industry. After retiring from the French Army into which he had been drafted during the Algerian war and where his creative talents exploded, Dehele took a one year course at the Painting Academy in the Quartier Latin, Paris. But his disillusionment with the way artists pandered to the tastes of art dealers and patrons at the expense of excellence and spontaneity, saw him concentrating on his work as a technician. Following a six year stint in photo engraving and lithography in Switzerland, he came to Nigeria in 1968 as photo-litho Manager of Academy Press Illupeju, Lagos. Thus, when Dehele mounted an exhibition of oil paintings at the National Museum, Onikan, Lagos, in the late eighties, he tagged it 'Nigeria, Greatness in Simplicity' drawing his inspiration 'on the greatness in the simple lifestyle of the ordinary folk.' Contrary to expectations, Dehele, though a frenchman, did not find the task overwhelming nor uncomfortable. His artistic sensibility, his humility, his marriage to a Nigerian, his involvement in manpower training and his relationships fostered with the local community saw him through. Explaining why he adopted the classical and realistic style. Dehele says he wants the cross-section of society to understand the message of his paintings. Perhaps most important is his dream to emulate the famous masters, hoping that someday his work would be displayed side by side with theirs. Says he: 'If that happens, I would have had the honour of portraying the black man as sharing the universality of human dignity.'