It was never the shiny surface that interested the loner from North France, he simply wanted to paint, according to his résumé. The process or the reality of painting was a basic existential state in which Eugène Leroy operated throughout his life.
In Denys Zacharopoulos, the museum has succeeded in finding a curator who is both a connoisseur and personal friend of Leroy. By collaborating both with Zacharopoulos, who has worked many times and in depth on Eugène Leroy, and with the Musée des Beaux-Arts Eugène Leroy in Tourcoing as a partner, it has proven possible to define this exhibition with an outstanding selection from Leroy’s body of works for Graz.
Besides some 60 paintings, around 40 drawings and etchings by the artist are on show. Graphic art was a completely autonomous discipline for Leroy, which he did not create on commercial grounds, rather in order to undertake certain clarifications which lay beyond painting. Other loans in this exhibition will come mainly from the Leroy family estate as well as from private Austrian owners.
