LES PASSES INTERDITS

Christian Silvain was born in 1950 in Eupen, Belgium. When his parents lost interest in him, Christian Silvain spent most of his childhood with two elderly aunts, who from the age of three or four instilled in him a taste for drawing and painting. He would spend hours drawing and painting while his aunts ran their toy shop on the ground floor. In 1955 his parents divorced. He then went to primary school in Spa, where he learned French and where his talent for art was soon revealed. From 1957-1964, after school and later after work, he painted in the corner of an attic, in the general indifference, paintings that nobody looked at. More and more withdrawn into himself, sometimes abusing alcohol, the gulf between himself and his family grew ever wider. It was after discovering the work of Paul Delvaux that he finally decided that he would be a painter and nothing else. After the death of his two aunts, Silvain made a complete break with his family. He left for Brussels with no money. Not knowing anyone there, he began one of the most difficult periods of his life. A singer in his spare time, he begged for a living, living in a storeroom under the roofs of Rue au Beurre, near the capital's Grand Place. From 1967 onwards, he worked as a handyman at the Brussels Operetta Theatre in the northern quarter, and began restoring the roofs of the theatre.