<Libidoscaphes en état de veille>

Félix Labisse, a self-taught painter of Belgian origin, settled in Paris in 1935. Attracted by secular culture, magic and esotericism, he populated his pictorial universe with hybrid beings from which sexes, branches or antennae emerge, in settings of icy luminosity. In 1962, he began the Libidoscaphes series, which he described as complex and sexualised marine forms. This work depicts extravagant black forms, sailing in a row in a barren landscape that seems to belong to another planet. The deep blue sky with its white halo enhances the eerie and disturbing nature of the ensemble.