Monique Watteau
| Monique Watteau | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Monique Dubois December 23, 1929 Liège, Belgium |
| Nationality | Belgian |
| Other names |
|
| Occupation | Writer, artist |
| Known for | Fantasy fiction, cryptozoological art |
| Spouse(s) |
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Alika Lindbergh (born Monique Dubois, 23 December 1929), commonly known by her former name Monique Watteau, is a Belgian fantasy fiction writer and artist.
Watteau was born Monique Dubois in Liège on 23 December 1929. Her father was Hubert Dubois, a playwright and poet with ties to Surrealism.
Watteau studied painting and drawing at the Académie royale des beaux-arts de Liège, and then went on to the Royal Conservatory of Liège to study theatre. At twenty, she left Belgium for Paris, where she met the Belgian scientist Bernard Heuvelmans, famous for his work in cryptozoology. In 1951, she appeared under the name Monique Watteau in Jean Anouilh's film Two Pennies' Worth of Violets. She also worked as a photography model.
Watteau's first novel, La colère végétale, was published in 1954. Critics praised it as a striking literary debut;Albert-Marie Schmidt wrote that Watteau had created "a new kind of fantasy" (un nouveau fantastique). Watteau was reportedly considered for the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Femina, but she was removed from the running of the latter prize in 1954 when the jury discovered that she had posed for nude photographs.
Her following novels, La nuit aux yeux de bête (1956), L'ange à fourrure (1958), and Je suis le ténébreux (1962), cemented her reputation as one of the foremost Francophone fantasy writers of the twentieth century. Her work is marked by its sensuality of expression and its ecological, Taoist, and Surrealist themes. The writer Anne Richter described Watteau's novels as prime examples of feminism in twentieth-century fantasy.
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