Pol Mara was born in Antwerp in 1920. He enrolled at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts in 1935 and studied at the National Institute of Fine Arts from 1941 to 1948. Following his graduation, his first paying job was as a graphic designer for the Janssen pharmaceutical group.
In the early years of his career, Mara adopted surrealism before evolving towards lyrical abstraction in the 1950s. Alongside fellow artists Paul Van Hoeydonck, Mark Verstockt, Filip Tas and Dan Vanseveren, he founded the avant-garde group G-58. His art at the time largely consisted of little round-headed figures and dot-based backgrounds. Eventually, he abandoned this style in favour of more abstract compositions.
In the 1960s, the artist introduced photorealist elements borrowed from mass media, such as television, film and magazines, into his corpus. In doing so, he positioned himself in the wake of artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and the British Pop Artists. His own take on the movement involved oneiric landscapes featuring scantily clad young women directly inspired by lingerie and fashion advertisement campaigns. Mara’s explanation regarding the use of such figures was that he was fighting the ugliness of society with beauty.
In 1972, health issues led Mara to move to Gordes, in Provence. The region now houses the Pol Mara Museum, which features over 200 of the artist’s works.
In 1974, he was commissioned for a fresco in his typical style for the Montgomery metro station in Brussels. He produced a series of 2 by 2 metre canvases positioned on their tips to break the monotony of the overly rectangular lines of the underground station.
An enthusiastic traveller, he enjoyed retrospectives around the world: New York in 1965; Kruishoutem, Veranneman Foundation in 1979; San Diego in 1982; Valparaíso (Chile) in 1987; Kruishoutem, Veranneman Foundation, in 1992; Soul (Korea) in 1993; and a continuously ongoing retrospective in his own museum in Gordes, inaugurated in 1996.
Mara passed away in his hometown in 1998.
