Born in Antwerp on December 26, 1932, Walter Leblanc was a visionary of post-war European art who spent his life chasing the “conjunction of rigour and poetry”. His journey into the world of art began with a quiet act of rebellion: in 1949, unbeknownst to his parents, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. This period of formation was marked by a hunger for discovery, leading him to hitch-hike through France and Spain in search of modern painting and to rent his first studio in 1951 to experiment freely.
As his artistic voice matured, Leblanc grew frustrated with traditional teaching, finding it “too traditional and unsuited” to his interest in invention. By the late 1950s, he made a radical choice, abandoning paint for good to focus on texture and light. He became a founding member of the G58 group in Antwerp, a collective born in reaction to the exclusion of the younger generation from major exhibitions. It was during this time, in 1959, that he introduced the “torsion”—his signature element. By twisting cotton threads, plastic, or metal, he discovered he could infuse his reliefs and sculptures with a sense of motion and vibration, effectively “staging light without artifice”.