Although Berthe Dubail's early canvases, in their choice of subject (landscapes, still-lifes and portraits) and their muted palette, chimed with the animist trend that was dominant in Belgium in the 1930s and during the war, there would soon be some distance between them and the pictorial concepts of a group of artists who came together in Hainaut under the name of Nervia. The sensory delight of these youthful works, the generously applied paint and their muffled harmonies are more reminiscent of an artist like Jacob Smits, with the same humanity of vision, simplified media and sensuous thick pigment, but which generate a sort of interior light, worthy of the master of the Campine.

Le jour, 1942	Le moulin Stoclet à Leval, 1944	Jeune femme au pull vert, 1950	La palissade bleue à Yvry, 1950

Mady de profil, 1952	L'ouvrier (Paris), 1953	Chevreuse, 1954	Le repas, 1954

She made many trips to Paris, spending several months at a time there, frequenting the famous studios of the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, which caused her art to evolve. Impasto was gradually replaced by angular outlines, authoritatively defining the contours of figures and urban landscapes: this was sober, serious, even severe art, which astonished Parisian critics with its masculine mastery and Expressionist tendencies, but which depicted with contained emotion the intensity of simple, human subjects, such as the variations on her female model Yan – the third version of which, through admirable grey-dominated tones, offers up a monumental morphology against an abstract background, presaging the artist's options to come.

Yan, 3e version, 1954	Yan, 4e version, 1954

Still curious to explore new ideas, and in line with the first shocks of post-war abstraction, from 1955 onward Berthe Dubail produced her first abstract experiments, with all the fervour of artists with fiery temperaments – an experience which coincided with a change in her life, when she moved to Ixelles-Brussels and continued her teaching at the lycée in that commune. Closer contact with the cultural life of Brussels, and meeting the poet Pierre Bourgeois, an indefatigable champion of modernity, proved to be favourable conditions for her aesthetic progression.

Hommage à Rembrandt, 1956	La tour, 1956	Espace bleu ou Espace nocturne, 1959	Forces adverses, 1960	Lumière noire, 1961

Entre les mondes, 1961	Soulèvement de bleus, 1962	Tournoiements, 1962

Gouache n°11, 1962	Prométhée, 1963	Vers le point Oméga, 1963

Starting with graphic motifs of plant-like fluidity and long curves joined together to create totemic angles, the artist created rapid rhythms, constructing a dense, luminous space which, as certain titles suggest, already evoked something of the immensity of the cosmos. "I try to give a physical presence to my moments of enthusiasm, distress, tenderness; sometimes the anxiety of the cosmos resolves itself in a controlled dynamism, and sometimes, conversely, the trembling subsides into an unusual balance," the artist noted with lucidity. For about eight years, Berthe Dubail opted for dynamism: incessant arabesques, broad deployments of gyratory rhythms, bringing with them luminous masses which soar, twirl and rear up. In her gouaches too, the artist demonstrates audacious gestures, much like Hartung in Paris, or Mortier or Van Anderlecht in Brussels. A major solo exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1963 allowed her to show these works to the public and the critics.

Gouache n°25, 1963	Sans titre, 1963	Intrusion, 1964

In around 1965, an internal struggle gradually led Berthe Dubail to a change of style. A new formal world occupied the space, although the artist remained faithful to certain inflexions and an interplay of curves and ovals. At that time they were less suggestive of the moving orbs of the cosmos and more of the silent presence of mineral expanses. Everything from here on seems to have been a favoured interaction with the earth, its accumulations of sediment, its stratified zones, its spaces swept by the wind and made iridescent by the light. The most original aspect of these paintings is undoubtedly the very nature of the pictorial material itself, made from a mix of sand and oil or casein. In parallel with Raoul Ubac, with these new coarse-grained materials, the artist was seeking soothing balances between minerals and life, through an abstract language that speaks by itself and also seems to embody various kinds of mental geography. Her choice of a sandy material, and a palette in which beiges and ochres dominate, lead the viewer to draw analogies with the mineral world and marine shorelines.

Des couleurs comme des sons, 1965	Eveil, 1965	Rapports insolites, 1966

Tensions amorties, 1966	Menace imprévue, 1966	Autarcie, 1967	Des éléments passent, 1967

Formes amies ou Accords, 1967	Pierres de lune III, 1968	Faisceau oblique, 1969

The monumentality of the planes and their interplay, the beauty of the full surfaces, the eloquence of the sumptuously worked materials… in short, the precision and economy of Berthe Dubail's pictorial media indicate her exceptional mastery of the register she chose and clearly situate her oeuvre among the greatest abstract works her country has ever produced.

Serge Goyens de Heusch

Péril de l'escalade, 1972	Forme méditative, 1972	Face au futur, 1975	La puissance et l'arrêt, 1975

Eclosion, 1979	La quête de l'absolu, 1981	Miracle, 1984