Vlaamse Expressionisten

From the 1920s onward, Gustave de Smet (1877-1943), Constant Permeke (1886-1952), and Frits van den Berghe (1883-1939) developed their own form of expressionism, characterized by a powerful and earthy realism. Their clumsy and struggling farmers and fishermen are odes to the connection between man and nature, rendered with a dynamic brush in characteristically dark “Flemish browns.” This Flemish expressionism was a success and quickly secured its place among all the innovative art movements that made the early 20th century such a pivotal moment in art history.

A new language

Fed up with the aesthetics and noncommittal nature of impressionism, artistic movements like Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter, and the Futurists fueled the international movement to embrace the new language of expressionism at the beginning of the 20th century. Here, expressiveness, color, and a coarse brushstroke triumph over fidelity, pure perspective, and compositional regularities.

At the outbreak of the First World War, a number of Belgian artists fled to the Netherlands, among other places, where they fell in love with the “wild” art of their fellow artists working in an expressionist style. This included Gustave de Smet, who would remain there until 1922. “I continued working with the desire to rid myself, step by step, of all clichés and cheap tricks. From now on, I want to endeavor to interpret the inner life, with the greatest possible simplicity, expressive through form and color,” he wrote.

In the Netherlands, painters such as Jan Sluijters and Leo Gestel formed a dynamic vanguard. A group of avant-garde artists, including Gestel, settled in the village of Bergen and developed their own unique style and theme: the Bergen School. The expressionism of the Bergen School is also linked in Flemish Expressionists to all the innovative trends in the international art world at the beginning of the 20th century.

Marc Greets Things in the Morning

The exhibition includes a special portrait that Floris Jespers (1889-1965) made of his son Marc. Marc is best known from the famous poem “Marc Greets Things in the Morning” (1922) by Paul van Ostaijen (1896-1928). In 1918, Van Ostaijen was the first to critically survey the group of Flemish expressionists with his essay “Expressionism in Flanders.”

The exhibition was made possible in part by the national government: the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands has granted an indemnity guarantee on behalf of the Minister of Education, Culture and Science.