Harold Ancart

Harold Ancart’s artworks explore our experience with natural landscapes and constructed surroundings. Drawing on diverse art historical references and frequently featuring abstract color passages, his pieces are occasionally organized into multipart tableaux.

Biography of Harold Ancart

Born in Brussels in 1980, Harold Ancart initially pursued political science before redirecting his studies and earning an MFA from École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de La Cambre, Brussels, in 2007. 

The artist nurtured a childhood interest in comic books and manga, finding inspiration in Belgian pioneers like Hergé, the creator of Tintin, and Peyo, the originator of the Smurfs. He later discovered figures like Katsuhiro Otomo and Frank Miller, as well as artists such as Frank Auerbach, James Ensor, Oskar Kokoschka, and Léon Spilliaert.

An important moment in Ancart's career occurred during a 2014 road trip across the United States, and his 2016 exhibition at the Menil Collection in Houston, showcasing drawings produced in his mobile studio during the journey, marked a significant turning point.

Ancart frequently works on a grand scale; in 2018, he presented "Untitled (the great night)," a 15-by-44-foot site-specific painting, showcased in the front window of the Shigeru Ban–designed Centre Pompidou-Metz, France, as part of the group exhibition "Painting the Night."

In 2019, with the backing of the Public Art Fund, he crafted "Subliminal Standard," a 16-foot-high freestanding concrete sculpture paying homage to the incidental patterns created by players on the walls of New York City's handball courts, displayed in Brooklyn's Cadman Plaza.

Currently, the artist resides and works in New York.

Harold Ancart's Art Style

Having been raised and educated in Belgium, Harold Ancart cultivated an artistic approach deeply tied to the American painting and abstraction tradition, reflecting the impact of artists like Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Brice Marden, and Wayne Thiebaud.

Concentrating on recognizable subjects, the artist identifies poetic moments within ordinary environments. Employing a serial working method, he transcends mere representation to underscore the painting process. Balancing between abstraction and representation, Ancart explores color and composition, incorporating the role of chance in shaping a work's final form.

Ancart's depictions of trees blur the distinctions between figure and ground, resonating with elements found in the works of Gustav Klimt, René Magritte, Piet Mondrian, Egon Schiele, and, in a series of immersive multi-panel canvases, Gottardo Piazzoni.

In his seascapes, Ancart employs simplified compositions to emphasize vibrant, nearly psychedelic color combinations. Exploring a series of paintings featuring icebergs, initiated in January 2018 as a response to a harsh New York winter, he continues to demonstrate a fascination with elemental subjects that elicit prolonged contemplation.

Ancart extends his exploration of themes and ideas into three dimensions. In a series of pigmented concrete sculptures from 2014 placed on the floor, he presents delicate, quasi-organic forms that evoke simple boats or troughs. The titles of these works, such as "Black Caviar" and "Grand Flaneur," allude to renowned racehorses, emphasizing the interplay of movement and rest. 

Starting in 2017, his pool sculptures consist of cast concrete reliefs positioned flat on pedestals and painted with hues reminiscent of his canvas work. In these pared-down structures, Ancart plays with painterly contrasts of surface and depth, abstraction and figuration.