BURY, POL

* 26.4.1922 Haine-Saint-Pierre, † 27.9.2005 Paris

The Belgian artist Pol Bury was born on 26 April 1922 in Haine-Saint-Pierre in Belgium. After studying at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Mons in 1938/39, he joined the Surrealist poetry group ‘Rupture’. Between 1949 and 1951 he was involved in the artists' group CoBrA. After co-founding the Art Abstrait group in 1952, Bury turned away from painting and four years later created his first kinetic sculpture with an electric motor.

In 1960 Bury moved to Paris, and six years later he went to New York for two years. In 1970 he took on a teaching position at the University of California in Berkley, and from 1973 he taught at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. There he was also awarded an honorary doctorate. In 1983 he was appointed professor of sculpture at the École nationale des beaux-arts de Paris. In 1964 he represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale. In the same year, he was one of the participants in documenta III in Kassel, and again four years later.

His painted work was indebted to Surrealism and was significantly influenced by his compatriots René Magritte and Raoul Ubac. On turning to sculpture, he explored the possibilities of kinetics and became one of the leading exponents of Kinetic Art. Pol Bury died in Paris on 27 September 2005.