Born in
Mons, Calonne studied music from 1944 until 1946 at the conservatories of Mons and Brussels, with amongst others the composer
André Souris, who introduced him to the
surrealist movement. He then pursued a course of art studies at the
Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1947 to 1949, when he attended
La fin et les moyens (The End and the Means), the first Belgian exhibition of the
COBRA group at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, where he met
Christian Dotremont. He immediately attached himself to this movement, becoming its youngest member and taking part in its meetings in the rue de la Paille, as well as in its review and at the exposition "L'Objet à travers les âges" (The Object through the Ages). Dividing himself between music and visual arts, he continued to pursue a double career after the dissolution of COBRA. In 1954 he made his first visit to the
Internationale Ferienkurse für neue Musik at
Darmstadt, where he met
Karlheinz Stockhausen and
Bruno Maderna. In 1957, he co-signed the "Manifesto against Style" with, amongst others, Serge Vandercam,
Pierre Restany,
Yves Klein, Roel d'Haese, and
Pierre Alechinsky. In 1964, he began publishing his writings (e.g., the novel
Belle que jamais, published in
Strates, one of Dotremont's journals) while continuing his musical activities. His 1959 composition
Quadrangles was performed on 24 January 1965 at the
Wallraf–Richartz Museum in Cologne, in the concert series of the second Cologne Courses for New Music. In 1971, he created the first of his ink-on-music-paper works and published sixteen
lithographs, with the title "Muettes", in the
Daily Bul. In the following year, he resumed painting in
oils on paper and fabric, and exhibited at the
Venice Biennale. Perpetuating the spirit of Cobra, he employed the principle of nonspecialization, cherished by the group, creating
logograms together with Dotremont. In 1981, he painted on assemblages of match boxes. Though he exhibited in 1949 as a member of Cobra, his first one-man show was mounted only in 1970 at the Dierickx gallery in Brussels. Subsequently, he exhibited many times in this city, where he lived in the working-class neighbourhood of
Marolles. He frequently participated in collective exhibitions in Belgium and abroad. His graphic and pictorial work is in the tradition of the plastic practice of writing which developed in Belgium. The rhythm of the elements, the musicality of their distribution in the appropriation of space, and extreme scriptuary fluidity of the symbols reveal the very personal contribution of this musician who painted and drew visual scores. In 1995 he played the rôle of the Representative of the Ministry of Culture in the 1996 film
Camping Cosmos. Calonne died in Brussels on 7 February 2022, at the age of 91. ==Compositions (selective list)==