The adventurous sculptor may find - like the mountaineer - that a backward glance makes him dizzy. Yet this over-the-shoulder glimpse of his progress may make the rest of his route - just as fraught with adventure and doubt - a bit easier. For an artist unaccustomed to filling gallery halls every so often, a retrospective exhibition is a complex and daunting exercise in stock-taking... Over half a century of semi-freedom spent in a breathless search for something that doesn’t exist, something indefinite.., that seems perpetually to slip out of reach. As in all past battles, victories and defeats became indistinguishable with hindsight, converging in a thousand bouts of enthusiasm and disappointment. Where is the source of this river forever changing course? No doubt far back in childhood, between the eight fingers of my mother “Pop” - the great instigator of three brothers and their friends. In want of organised beliefs, she had reinvented her own; and, to give weight to her convictions, she took on the task of converting all who came into genuine contact with her. Her depth of involvement in all things was such that the discoveries we made together were transcendent, becoming the tangible proofs of universal truth. Nature was the example at the origin of everything: plants, shells, crystals, animals... were the necessary mutes to understanding the very purpose of man’s life and creativity. For Baudelaire, genius is “childhood revisited at will”. If the adult, with all his experience, has learnt to appropriate things that exist already, the inventor is some times privileged to retain from childhood that faculty of the imagination that allows one to give life to mere figments. While teaching us that no discovery exists if it isn’t shared, Pop also made us understand that convincing others is a prime means of making things live. Selling an idea is much more exhdarating than selling something that already exists. Of course we owe everything to everyone. And this is no doubt why, as I make this list, it seems that behind each of these indispensable Utopias someone else lingers who, while never having put their hand to the work, was also its creator by implication, by belief, or simply by their presence. Some of the products of this ardour are collected here. I hope one can discern an underlying through-line in these works, which were so often the upshot of an opportunity, a chance meeting, a certain complicity.

Distinctions
1927 Born in Brussels on 20 January.
1943 Studies at the Brussels national institute of architecture and decorative arts La Cambre (ceramics and sculpture).
1949 Founds with Alechinsky, Reinhoud, Dotremont and Olyff the A tellers du Macais, the centre of the Cobra movement in Brussels.
1953 Professor Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
1956 Grand Prix de Rome, sculpture.
1958 Grand Prix (gold and silver) at the Brussels Worlds Fair.
1961 Professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Professor at Antwerp’s National Institute of Fine Arts.
1962 Gold medal, Prague Arts Fair.
1965 Gold medal, International Biennial of Faenza.
1968 Professor at the University of Iowa, USA.
1977 professor at the University of Colorado (Boulder), and the art schooJs of Minneapolis, Atlanta and Philadelphia, USA.
1984-87 Lamar Dodd Chair for sculpture, University of Georgia, USA.
1986 Publication of Olivier Strebelle, Journal d’un sculpteur. Gold and Silver Plantin Moretus. Awards for the French and Dutch editions. Awarded The World’s Most Beaotffu/ Book award at the Leipzig Book Fair.
1987 Corresponding member of the Belgian Royal Academy (Beaux-Arts et Lettres).

Personal Expositions
1950 Oslo Museum of Decorative Arts.
1956 Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.
1961 Biennial of Sao Paulo.
1962 Biennial of Venice.
1969 Universities of Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa and Drake, USA.
1970 Galerie Withofs, Brussels..
1973 University of Leuven.
1974 Knoll International, London, Paris and Rome.
1979-80 Galerie Isy Brachot, Paris and Brussels.
1980 Middelheim Open-Air Sculpture Museum, Antwerp.
1981 Galerie Oderrnatt and FIAC Paris.
1982 Galerie Techno, Brussels and Amsterdam.
1992 Exposition on the theme of Lions at Leuven.
1993 European cultural city exposition, Antwerp.
1995 Le Fil Rouge, Louvain-la-Neuve.

Monumental Works & Commissions
1950 Le Triton d’Ostende, Ostend casino, and La Sirène d’Ostende, Blankenberge casino.
1957 Europe, in Brussels’ Galerie Ravenstein.
1958 La Coquille, for Belgian Shell Company. Cheval Bayard, at the
1958 Brussels World’s Fair and at Namur’s Pont des Ardennes.
1966 Anthropomotion, Montreal World’s Fair.
1972 Le Son Génie, University of Jerusalem.
1973 Dessus-Dessous, for the Caisse Générale d’Epargne et de Retraite, Brussels.
1976 L’Endormie and L’Epanouie, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
1980 Miss Télévision, for the Brussels headquarters of Ciné Revue.
1984 Protecting Eagle, Harrisburg. USA. Artifices d’Acier, at the Crédit Communal de Belgique, Brussels.
1985 Between Sea and Sky, Marina Center, Singapore.
1986 4 monumental Lions, Marriott Marquis Hotel, Atlanta, USA.
1989 L’Envol, for Brussels’ Ministère des Finances.
1990-91 Ascendances, Trade Mart Design Center, Brussels.
1991 Les Lions, Theosophie Institute at Leuven University.
1992 Confluences, European Parliament, Brussels.
1993-94 Le Phénix 44, on Brussels’ avenue Louise.
1994-95 Flight in Mind, Brussels National Airport, Zaventem. Les Girouettes de Louvain-la-Neuve, for Shell at Louvain-la-Neuve.

Publications
1956 Palais des Beaux-Art catalogue.
1962 Galleria Pagani catalogue.
1971 Galerie Withofs catalogue.
1975 Knoll International catalogue.
1979 Galerie Isy Brachot catalogue.
1984 Crédit Communal catalogue.
1985 0livier Strebelle, Journal d’un sculpteur

Films
1979 Style, by Jean Antoine.
1984 Artifices d’Acier, by Thierry Zéno.
1986 tes Lions d’Atlanta, by Thierry Zéno. In progress: Olivier Strebelle, sculpteur, by Thierry Zéno.