People and Bodies
Artist / maker
Frits van den Berghe (painters (artists))Date
ca. 1929Period
20th centuryCollection
Museum of Fine Arts Ghent
At the end of the 1920s, Frits Van den Berghe left his pure expressionist style for a visual language inspired by surrealism and Max Ernst's écriture automatique. Even earlier, Van den Berghe had a passion for microscopic research. This penetration into the microstructure of matter was also decisive for the style of his late works. People and Bodies shows a…
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At the end of the 1920s, Frits Van den Berghe left his pure expressionist style for a visual language inspired by surrealism and Max Ernst's écriture automatique. Even earlier, Van den Berghe had a passion for microscopic research. This penetration into the microstructure of matter was also decisive for the style of his late works. People and Bodies shows a bizarre world in which monstrosities and human body parts grow organically out of the paint matter. The dream has become a nightmare in which unconscious forces loom up like menacing monsters. The painting illustrates Van den Berghe's increasingly pessimistic view of human existence.
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