Paul Duhem

1919 - 1999, Belgium

After a long winding road, Paul Duhem was accepted in La Pommeraie Centre. His life became gentler in the calm of a daily life where he had a place of his own. In 1989, Paul Duhem, at that time seventy years old, wants to leave the centre and enters an old people’s home, but at this time he happens to meet Bruno Gerard, who runs the painting unit in La Pommeraie. This is probably the beginning of a second birth for him.

For ten years, he attends the art therapy unit with intensity. Standing back from the world, he expressed himself there until his final days. Duhem’s figures are Janus-like. With their head crushed down into their shoulders, their ears sticking out, their mental faculty boxed in, these unique soldiers are the legionnaires of a closed world.