Émile Lucien Salkin

Émile Lucien Salkin was a painter, graphic artist and illustrator who was the son of the Belgian painter Maria Lambiotte. During World War I he began to make pen-and-ink drawings of battlefields from his imagination. In 1917-19 he was trained at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Saint Gilles. Later in Paris, he studied drawing and sculpture in museums, including the Louvre.

In 1935, with the architect Jean-Jules Eggerickx, Salkin was in charge of the decoration of Pavillon de l’Electricité for the Universal and International Exhibition in Brussels in 1935. He then travelled around Italy but in 1939 was mobilized, soon becoming a prisoner-of-war at the beginning of World War II, but he was released in mid-June 1940. In 1941, he became an artistic drawing teacher at the École Professionnelle, Industrielle et d’Arts décoratifs of Anderlecht. In 1943, Salkin was nominated Esthetic teacher at the Académie des Beaux-Arts of Tournai and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Namur.

After the war Salkin studied architecture and Christian statuary, as well as Spanish and Italian painting and sculpturing. With his friend Paul Delvaux, he then created frescos and wall paintings in Belgium. In 1967, Salkin settled in the South of France. The watercolor of a “Boxing Match” was created in 1934 in the format 20.5 x 12 cm. His other five works have yet to be identified.