Oil on canvas by Émile LAFAMÉ (1934-2017) depicting a colourful dream, halfway between figuration and abstraction.

Titled and dated on the back "Rêve nocturne (19)75".

Size of the work: 55 x 65 cm.

The work is in good condition, although there is a small watery stain above the signature, which was probably absent initially.


Émile Lafamé (known as Émile Bogaert) was born in Hazebrouck in the Nord region of France in 1934.
"His beginnings as an artist were extraordinary. Fleeing the constraints of the heavy family atmosphere, he "went up" to Paris at the age of 18 with the fierce desire to be a painter. In the midst of the Montmartre bohemia, a providential meeting with Pablo Picasso convinced him of the need to learn in order to master his passion and talent. It was at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lille that he earned the famous nickname L'affamé, which he would choose as his artist's name a few years later. The students drew in charcoal, blurring their lines with breadcrumbs, which Émile voraciously devoured from the crusts left on the tables.
After completing his training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels and the Beaux Arts in Paris, it was in the latter city that he really settled in 1962, the year he married Geneviève. Alternating exhibitions in galleries (Katia Granoff) and at the major Parisian salons (Artistes Français, Indépendants, etc.), his painting never ceased to evolve.


Expressionist in the 1950s, his style became more abstract, giving pride of place to large expanses of colour, in the manner of Charles Lapicque, at the end of the following decade. His varied subjects testify to his great joy in painting, while at the same time his desire to take a social approach to the times, very much in the spirit of the Peintres témoins de leur temps.
The colours soften at the turn of the 1980s, when the artist seems to adopt a more serene, inward-looking approach, while retaining an inextinguishable desire to exist and express himself as a painter, as corroborated by the extraordinary nickname he adopted."
Text by Damien Voutay.

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