​VICTOR  SERVRANCKX
Major avant-garde & surrealist artist

VICTOR  SERVRANCKX  1897 - 1965
Belgian avant-garde artist, colleague and friend of René Magritte, Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp, Filippo Marinetti, Van Doesburg, Moholy-Nagy etc.. undoubtedly one of the major Belgian artists of the XXth century whose works feature in the permanent collections of MOMA New York, Yale University, Centre Pompidou Paris, Grenoble, Thyssen-Bornemisza Madrid, Lisbon, Ludwig museum Vienna, Lehmbruck museum Duisburg, Mönchengladbach, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, Antwerp etc..

June 1922 : René Magritte, E.L.T. Mesens, Servranckx, Pierre-Louis Flouquet, Pierre Bourgeois
​Georgette Berger-Magritte, Pierre Broodcoorens, Henriette Flouquet

Servranckx was highly appreciated by many great contemporaries

Abstract Composition 1922, Gouache (Sold)
​"Le premier qui pratiqua l'art abstrait en Belgique fut Servranckx"   Michel Seuphor

Invited by Marcel Duchamp, Servranckx participated in the "International Exhibition of Modern Art", organized in 1926 by "Société Anonyme" at the Brooklyn museum in New York.  "Société Anonyme" had been created by american artist & mecenas Katherine Dreier and by Marcel Duchamp. Later Miss Dreier bequeathed her collection of modern art to the Yale University Art Gallery.

Cover of the famous Berlin magazine "Der Sturm" edited by Herwarth Walden, 1928
The painting on the cover belongs to the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris

 Opus 10   1928  "Clouded marble-marbled clouds" Oil on canvas, 46 x 37 cm
In 1928 Herwarth Walden exhibited Servranckx at Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin
​Exhibited at Ixelles Museum Brussels in 1965
​Private collection

Opus 2  1927, the water realm, oil on panel
​Collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp

Solo exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, 1929

Opus 20  1931 "Life starts mysteriously" Oil on canvas  70 x 58 cm
The artist's thumbprints appear in the circle at the upper right
Servranckx, who was fascinated by scientific discoveries, makes us look at the origins of life through a microscope.
Exhibitions : Budapest, Prague, Den Haag 1936 (Les artistes musicalistes), the Corcoran Gallery of Art Museum, Washington D.C., 1963
Ixelles Museum 1965, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, 1989, full page illustration in the catalogue.
Available, call 02 539.23.09 or mail group2gallerybrussels@gmail.com

Exhibition in Budapest 1936
​"Life starts mysteriously" is below right

In 2019 Group 2 Gallery organized a one-man show of the artist under the patronage of Mrs Anne Adriaens-Pannier,
Honorary curator of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium
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Mrs Anne Adriaens-Pannier opening the Servranckx exhibition at Group 2 Gallery in 2019.

Opus 9  1927 Oil on canvas 130 x 205 cm
With reference to Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, this major work could be called "1927 a Space Odyssey"
​Private collection

 ​Opus 7  1930  Oil and wood on panel (rare mixed media - collage)  70 x 90 cm
Exhibited at Ixelles Museum, 1965, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, 1989, illustration in the catalogue.
Michel Seuphor wrote that Servranckx was a visionary artist and cosmic poet painting his metaphysical obsessions.
The experienced viewer will discover affinities with the work of Max Ernst
​Available

Cosmic vision  Drawing  1927
Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York

Opus 2   1933 "Portrait of Mrs Ch. B.", ​Oil on canvas, 58 x 45 cm
The cloudy background upper left is in perfect harmony with the ladies' haircut
​Available

Opus 12  1941 "Voluptuous mating of 2 snails - Accouplement vcluptueux de 2 escargots", Oil on canvas, 33 x 41 cm
​Exhibited at Ixelles Museum in 1965
​Servranckx had a good sense of humour
​Available

Opus 14   1941 "wheat threshing machine" Oil on panel
​SOLD

"The wheat - Le blé coupé" 1945, Oil on cardboard
Exhibited at Palais des Beaux-Arts Brussels, 1947
​Private collection

"The Eiger, Mönch & Jungfrau mountain range" (Interlaken, Switzerland) 1948
​Oil on panel, 34 x 41 cm
Painted by the artist on his way to the Venice Biennial in 1948

Catalogue of Servranckx exhibition at Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, 1947.
​Preface by the famous parisian art dealer Léonce Rosenberg :
"Nous avons été heureux de retrouver chez Servranckx les qualités que nous avons toujours constatées dans son art et qui peuvent se formuler ainsi : originalité, noblesse, style et conscience"

Léonce Rosenberg admiring "Opus 23  1923" at Galerie Apollo in 1946.
Collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels.

The Pelican, 1947, a rare Pastel on fabric, 43 x 31 cm
​Exhibited at Ixelles museum, 1965
​Available

Opus 20 "Purple oval" 1949  Oil on canvas, 41 x 33 cm
​Exhibited at Ixelles Museum, 1965
​Available

Opus 5  1952  "The magic of dawn and dusk - Magie d'aube et de crépuscule" Oil on canvas, 146 x 92 cm
​​Exhibited at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels in 1989
​Available

Opus 2 - 1963, Oil on canvas, 204 x 61 cm
One of the artist's last works, a synthesis of his long career
​Available

The artist and art critic Maurits Bilcke at the opening of his last solo exhibition, Ixelles museum, 1965.
"The water realm" 1927, collection Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

View of the Servranckx exhibition at Group 2 Gallery in 2019

Drawings at the Servranckx exhibition at Group 2 Gallery in 2019. Contact us for pictures and prices.

M. Bilcke, Mrs Gailliard, Servranckx, J.J. Gailliard

Servranckx, Jean-Jacques Gailliard

Victor Servranckx, born in 1897 in Diegem near Brussels made his first abstract work, a gouache/collage, in 1915. From 1913 to 1917 he studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Brussels where he had Constant Montald and Adolphe Crespin as Professors and a.o. René Magritte and Flouquet as fellow students. In 1917 several of his non-figurative works were exhibited at Galerie Georges Giroux in Brussels. Artist Michel Seuphor, author of "Abstract art in Flanders", wrote that this was the very first exhibition of abstract art in Belgium. Servranckx was in touch with international masters such as Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp and the italian futurist Filippo Marinetti. After an important solo exhition in 1924 at Galerie Royale in Brussels, the artist was invited by Marcel Duchamp to participate at the International exhibition of Modern Art organized by the New York gallery "Société Anonyme" in 1927. As a member of the Avant-Garde movement in Brussels, Servranckx wrote articles for the magazine "7 Arts". In 1922 he wrote with René Magritte the manifesto "L’art pur. Défense de l’esthétique". Servranckx gave his works neutral titles (Opus, followed by a serial number), which was in the spirit of the idea of ‘collective art’. In 1925, Servranckx momentarily ceased painting and devoted himself to architecture and design in his studio "Cubist Home". With architect Huib Hoste he designed an office space for the "International exhibition of decorative arts" in Paris. When he resumed painting a year later, he distanced himself from the constructivist style, using a very diverse mixture of styles in his oeuvre. His work became "abstract and cosmic surrealist" whereby organic elements are combined with geometrical forms. In visionary paintings with biomorphic figures, Servranckx experimented with new techniques and materials. However, the design element remained part of his visual means of expression. After WWII, he returned to a formal abstraction and actively cooperated with a new generation of abstract artists such as ​Jo Delahaut and Paul Van Hoeydonck​​. Servranckx participated at the World Exhibition in Brussels in 1958. 

 

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