Born in 1913 into a middle class military family in Flanders, Wemaëre settled with his family in Versailles. Apart from ten years in Normandy, Versailles has remained his base for both life and work since he set up his studio in the family house on the rue d’Anjou. This town represents not only a style of life in which he feels at ease, it also offers him the proximity to a genuine museum of classical French art at its pinnacle.

Wemaëre’s approach to painting is far removed from any obvious references. He does not paint to illustrate stated themes or heroic set pieces. It is rather a purely creative act which springs from emotion and intuition. His paintings project a special sort of grace, a rhythm underlined by a range of colors both simple and warm. While his enthusiasm and gusto retain something of Abstract Expressionism, his bold structures and fluid planes, his exquisite whites, and the subtleties of relationships and of colors in his work reveal a temperament simultaneously lyrical and sensitive. His paintings embrace the three periods covering the panorama of the human condition: ancient, in the sense that it returns to the source; modern, because it is embedded in that “coherent dreaming” of our wish for a less absurd universe; and contemporary, based on events and lacking the illusory perspective of the intellectual’s dry reflection.