The Belgian Artist Thomas Lerooy

Thomas Lerooy is an internationally acclaimed Belgian artist renowned for blending classical elements with modern concepts. One of his more striking works, Not Enough Brains to Survive 2009 bronze sculpture series stands out as one of his signature works.

These sculptures show small bodies weighed down by huge heads. This distorts proportion and challenges traditional ideas of balance.

Early Life and Education

Thomas Lerooy was born in 1981 and currently resides and works in Brussels. His work includes drawings and bronze sculptures that combine beauty, ugliness, order and chaos to produce whimsical yet playful results that combine beauty with intimacy, drama and humor.

Recurring in his work, the concept of transience and the fleeting nature of life plays an essential role. His sculptures and drawings draw their inspiration from classical motifs as well as seventeenth-century vanitas paintings, anatomical drawings, trompe-l’il and grotesque prints.

His most renowned works are sculptures featuring people with large heads. This form serves to demonstrate the “thought-body” connection, an idea central to Embodied Cognition research. Additionally, these whimsical figures represent humanity’s attempts at understanding ourselves and our surroundings.

Professional Career

Thomas Lerooy (b. 1981) from Belgium creates drawings and bronze sculptures that challenge and explore traditional concepts of iconography rooted in Western art: Roman, Renaissance, Classicism and Mannerism among them.

The sculptor enjoys playing with proportion, often creating small bodies weighed down by large heads – as seen in his monumental sculpture titled Not Enough Brains to Survive.

His paintings are like living things to him: they require time for them to bloom both visually and conceptually. Drama often coexists with humor in his oeuvre; theatricality meets intimacy while transience and the sense of fleeting time are prominent themes throughout. For inspiration he frequently turns to book illustrations, anatomical drawings and grotesque prints in creating his grotesque works.

Achievement and Honors

Lerooy explores the boundaries of drawing, sculpture and painting to push their limits to their absolute limit. His mysterious works challenge the logic of their audience and leave interpretation up to them. Often using recognisable motifs that he manipulates in unexpected ways to subvert expectations.

At Harvard Grammar School and Cambridge High and Latin School (CHLS), later known as Harvard Rindge and Latin School. While attending CHLS he was active with both Glee Club and Mandolin Club as well as playing trombone in their band at football games.

Lerooy began his artistic career working in bronze and glass before adapting his talents into magical paintings that blend Renaissance, Baroque and Surrealist styles. His pieces can be found in several major collections including Belfius Art Collection; Ville de Bruxelles in Belgium; City of Puurs and Province West Flanders all located within Belgium.

Personal Life

Thomas Lerooy is a Belgian artist specializing in sculptures, drawings and paintings that explore themes such as transience and mortality. He employs humor as well as trompe l’oeil techniques to create surreal worlds that are both macabre and playful in appearance.

He draws upon classical motifs to challenge and subvert contemporary concepts, for instance using nudes from antiquity, putti with skulls, and Saint Sebastian being hit by an arrow as means to questioning beauty and the grotesque.

Braindance, his 2009 series of four bronze sculptures, is an outstanding illustration of this concept. Each statue features a small torso with an outsized head for an eye-catching visual pun that both shocks and engages viewers.

Net Worth

Thomas Lerooy was born in Roeselare, Belgium and now resides in Brussels. Through sculptures and drawings he explores the inner realms of human experience through sculpture. His intricate artworks challenge viewer logic while leaving interpretation up to each viewer’s own imagination. His pieces rework iconic images such as the sea to explore various layers of meaning; drawing out our deeper instincts while playing on life’s absurdities. Lerooy’s work addresses, with irony and provocation, Western art from antiquity through to Renaissance and Mannerism to more contemporary neo-expressionist styles. Lerooy’s paintings represent his latest development; these came about because he experienced limitations with his drawing technique as well as constraints created by working in bronze.