Christian Dotremont

Christian Dotremont (Tervuren, 1922 - Buizingen, 1979) was a Belgian painter and poet best known for his logograms, painted poems in which word and line merge on a single surface.

In 1946 he was a founding member of the Revolutionary Surrealist Group and, shortly afterwards, he co-founded COBRA with the Danish artist Asger Jorn. Within the group he brought Henri Lefebvre's Critique de la vie quotidienne (1946) to his colleagues' attention, a reading that helped shape part of the group's theoretical debate.

His output centred on the logograms, the name he himself gave to these works. In them writing stops being a mere support and becomes part of the image: the text is traced, drawn and integrated into the painting, so the viewer must read and look at once. His works and publications include Labisse (1946) and Les jambages au cou (1949). The correspondence Cartes et lettres, 1966-1979 appeared in 1986, and the preface he wrote for Cobra 1948-1951 was published in 1980, after his death.

His ideas had an echo in the Situationist International. Sources also note his connection with Guy Debord, described as Dotremont's teacher and guide in the field of film, although the extent of that influence is not detailed.

Dotremont died of tuberculosis in Buizingen in 1979. His legacy lives on mainly through the logograms, which remain a distinctive case within the relationship between poetry and painting in the twentieth century.