The Idiot by the Pond
Artist / maker
Frits van den Berghe (painters (artists))Date
ca. 1926Period
20th centuryCollection
Museum of Fine Arts Ghent
In The Idiot by the Pond Frits van den Berghe presents a village idiot – apparently a real person – surrounded by elements from his surroundings: his caravan, a pond, stables and ducks. The composition has been built up statically with bright areas of colour adjoining each other. This is one of Van den Berghe’s maturest expressionist works from the…
Read more
In The Idiot by the Pond Frits van den Berghe presents a village idiot – apparently a real person – surrounded by elements from his surroundings: his caravan, a pond, stables and ducks. The composition has been built up statically with bright areas of colour adjoining each other. This is one of Van den Berghe’s maturest expressionist works from the middle of the 1920s. The painter has not turned the village idiot into a caricature here. The portrait of the idiot with his fat body and empty gaze rather expresses the artist’s own melancholy and his sympathy for the clumsiness and feeble-mindedness of humanity.
Read less
