Jane Graverol Belgian, 1905-1984

Jane Graverol, born December 18, 1905, in Ixelles, Belgium, was a Belgian painter closely associated with the Surrealist movement. Daughter of Alexandre Graverol and Anne-Marie Lagadec, she studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels beginning in 1921, where she was taught by Jean Delville and Constant Montald. Her early works reflected a strong influence of Symbolism, but by the 1930s she began to gravitate toward dreamlike imagery that would soon lead her into Surrealism.

She first exhibited publicly in 1927, and in the following decades she established herself as one of the few women in Belgium to play an active role in the surrealist avant-garde. In 1949, she came into close contact with René Magritte, Louis Scutenaire, Camille Goemans, and Marcel Lecomte, deepening her ties with the Belgian surrealist circle. Alongside her painting, she also contributed to literary and artistic projects: in 1952 she co-founded the review Temps mêlés with André Blavier, and in 1954 she helped launch Les Lèvres nues with Marcel Mariën and Paul Nougé, a platform that mixed politics, poetry, and Surrealism with sharp provocation.

Graverol’s paintings are distinguished by their meticulous technique and poetic, dreamlike atmosphere. She often used themes of metamorphosis, hybrid creatures, and fantastical flora and fauna, while frequently placing the female figure at the center of her imagery—not as passive muse but as a symbol of strength, identity, and emancipation. Her work thus brought a distinctly feminine perspective to Surrealism, in contrast to the predominantly male vision of the movement.

In the 1960s and 1970s, as Surrealism lost momentum, she continued to paint with equal intensity, often addressing themes of war, violence, and human fragility. Among her notable works is La Goutte d’eau (1964), a striking collective portrait of Belgian surrealists.

Jane Graverol spent her later years partly in France, where she lived with Gaston Ferdière. She died on April 24, 1984, in Fontainebleau, at the age of 78. Today, she is remembered as one of the rare women to have fully participated in the surrealist adventure, and her paintings remain remarkable for their precision, mystery, and affirmation of female creativity within a movement that often relegated women to the background.