.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Frits van den Berghe was one of the most interesting Belgian expressionist artists of the first part of the twentieth century. He started his career at the turn of the century influenced by the Symbolist and Luminist artists who were grouped in Laethem-Saint-Martin. Soon afterwards, around 1908, he wrote a manifesto together with his friend and fellow artist Gustave De Smet opposing Impressionism 'à la Claus.' During the First World War, he lived in the Netherlands, a period of existential doubt which slowed down his pictorial activity. Nevertheless the Cubism of the French artist Henri Le Fauconnier as well the Futurist movement were a revelation for him. The magazine Das Kunstblatt to which Gustave De Smet had subscribed opened the door for Van den Berghe to the German Expressionist movement. On his return in 1922 the art critics and dealers P.G. van Hecke and André de Ridder were of overriding importance for his first breakthrough to the gallery Sélection and in 1926 to the gallery Le Centaure. The international allure of Le Centaure, which exhibited the works of Lhote, Leger, Arp, Klee, Foujita, Zadkine, Miro and Ernst, encouraged van den Berghe's surrealist development. The Max Ernst exhibition at Le Centaure in 1927 had a great impact on him and from that moment on, he tried to detach himself from traditional painting.
Between 1928 and 1931, Frits van den Berghe revealed in a prodigal and almost exultant way his new concept in flower paintings, in which he wanted to open the barriers between the world of phenomena and the irrational, between life and death. Most often in his flower paintings, we observe a lugubrious city in the background; we observe richly coloured and luxuriant vegetation at various stages of metamorphosis. Van den Berghe approached the city as a place where the hermit is left with his dreams and mental tensions. In Fleurs sur la ville we observe rough moulds and risen mushrooms, polyps, grimacing flowers and human forms sometimes very close to the stage of degeneration or decomposition. In this painting, the city in the background, empty and sterile runs the risk of being taken over by this unrestrained growth.
Between 1928 and 1931, Frits van den Berghe revealed in a prodigal and almost exultant way his new concept in flower paintings, in which he wanted to open the barriers between the world of phenomena and the irrational, between life and death. Most often in his flower paintings, we observe a lugubrious city in the background; we observe richly coloured and luxuriant vegetation at various stages of metamorphosis. Van den Berghe approached the city as a place where the hermit is left with his dreams and mental tensions. In Fleurs sur la ville we observe rough moulds and risen mushrooms, polyps, grimacing flowers and human forms sometimes very close to the stage of degeneration or decomposition. In this painting, the city in the background, empty and sterile runs the risk of being taken over by this unrestrained growth.