La Fête du Bas Noir perfectly illustrates what art critic Gérald Gassiot-Talabot has said: “Alechinsky, whose return to the CoBrA spirit is periodically announced, seems once again, after a rather wise episode, to be returning to more violent and dangerous games. The loops, familiar to his style, have again widened into large lacerations from which emerge intertwined forms, patient or mocking faces, a whole fantastic world. Alechinsky, steeped in the Flemish expressionist tradition, has a sense of the crowd, of the trogne, of the grotesque, of bizarre alliances.” In Cimaise magazine, May-June 1962.

Journalist Michel Conil-Lacoste remarks: “In the paintings of the last two years, more direct, more relaxed ... the metaphors change kingdoms: plant and mineral elements take on a pair of eyes, become the embryo of a face in line ... the metaphors change kingdoms: plant and mineral elements take on eyes, become the embryo of a face in line with Ensor's expressionism and Lautréamont's surrealism, what Alechinsky calls “taking out his monsters”.
In Le Monde, May 11, 1962.

Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, La Fête du Bas Noir still retains all the aesthetics of the CoBrA years: spontaneity of gesture, freedom of expression, use of bright colors. In a profusion of colors, shapes and materials, the artist reveals a female figure wearing a long black stocking. From this explosive variegation, Alechinsky restores the vitality and exuberance of a Carnival character, a resurgence of his youth in Belgium and the masked figures of James Ensor (1860-1949).

Painted in 1963, La Fête du Bas Noir is one of Pierre Alechinsky's last oil paintings. The artist definitively abandoned this technique in 1965, when he undertook Central Park, an inaugural painting in more ways than one, since it developed his first “marginal remarks” and used acrylic on paper.

Pierre Alechinsky, Central Park, 1965 - Acrylic on paper laid on canvas - 162 x 193 cm - Collection of the artist