Eugène Leroy, the Years of Maturity (1980–2000)

On the occasion of the exhibition that the Tourcoing museum is dedicating to the last twenty years of Eugène Leroy’s (1910–2000) work, opening on 3 October 2025, it is worth revisiting this late period of his oeuvre, regarded as one of the most radical. A native of Tourcoing, where he lived and worked almost his entire life, Eugène Leroy always maintained a deep connection with the North, which subtly irrigates his work. Very early on, he shared the values of the Groupe de Roubaix, an informal yet close-knit group bringing together painters, sculptors, and printmakers (Jean Roulland, Arthur Van Hecke, or Eugène Dodeigne, …): respect for manual work, engagement with the world, sincerity of gesture, a rejection of formalism, and the preservation of a strong regional anchoring while remaining in dialogue with international movements.


Source: Wikipedia. Painting held at the National Museum of Modern Art and at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Matter as Horizon

From the 1980s onward, Leroy’s practice intensified into an almost exclusive relationship with pictorial matter. Successive layers of paint thickened, gradually covering the motifs until they sometimes became barely perceptible. Far from being an act of erasure, this process builds a visual depth that lends his paintings a singular power. The subject (nude, portrait, or landscape) appears and disappears through the density of the impasto, oscillating between revelation and dissolution. These two decades are also those of long-duration work, where the painting is constructed in strata. Far from immediate virtuosity, Leroy embraces a slow rhythm, a quasi-meditative patience that sets his work against contemporary practices of instantaneity. This approach gives his canvases a particular intensity, as each seems to contain the memory of its own making.


Eugène Leroy (1910–2000)
Fleurs, c. 1960
Oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right
Sold €16 000

Recognition and Legacy

The radical nature of this approach—at times judged hermetic—ultimately established Leroy as a key figure in European painting at the end of the 20 th century. His final years of creation now appear as a moment of full maturity, when his pictorial language asserts itself with force. This recognition is also reflected in the art market. Aguttes has had the opportunity to present several canvases from this period, with hammer prices attesting to collectors’ sustained interest.


Eugène Leroy (1910–2000)
Untitled (Tree), 1967
Oil on canvas, dated and signed lower right
Sold €22 500

Upcoming Auction
Post-war & Contemporary Art
Wednesday, 19 November 2025

To consign paintings by Eugène Leroy or by artists of the Groupe de Roubaix, please contact Pauline Boddaert
boddaert@aguttes.com – 06 99 02 22 63