STRAIGHT & CURVED LINES
JEU DE LIGNES  LIJNENSPEL

LOUIS VAN LINT  SUZANNE  VAN DAMME  ROGER DUDANT​
LISMONDE  HEERBRANT  GILBERT DECOCK
GILBERT SWIMBERGHE  MARCEL-LOUIS BAUGNIET
ALBERT RUBENS  MARCASE  FELIX HANNAERT 

​  April 13 - May 26  2018
Open wednesday to saturday  2 - 6 PM or on appointment 02.539.23.09

Group 2 Gallery is pleased to announce its new exhibition "Straight & curved lines". This thematic show will highlight both geometrical- and lyrical abstract works by ten well-known belgian artists.

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Suzanne Van Damme (1901-1986)

Lismonde (1908-2001)

Louis Van Lint (1909-1986)

Heerbrant (1912-1982)

Gilbert Swimberghe (1927-2015)

Gilbert Decock (1928-2007)

Roger Dudant (1929-2008)

Albert Rubens (1944) & François Morellet (1926-2016)

Felix Hannaert (1944)

Marcase (1946)

Suzanne Van Damme was born in Ghent, Belgium in 1901. Disciple of James Ensor in her early years, she painted the great Master in his Ostend home in 1925 with « The Entry of Christ in Brussels »,- which now belongs to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles- in the background. In 1938 Ensor painted a canvas named « Peintres aux Prises », featuring Suzanne Van Damme - pencil in hand - and himself seated and looking up at her. READ  MORE
Louis Van Lint studied painting at the Academy of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode until 1939. His early work reflects a traditional figurative painting style with a unique sense of color. In 1940 he founded the group "La Route Libre" with Gaston Bertrand and Anne Bonnet. His art was influenced to some degree by the animist movement, but he eventually broke away with the presentation of his painting, The Flayed Body (L'Ecorche, 1943), a shocking expression of his wish for more artistic freedom that consequently sounded a revolt against animism. As his style matured, he switched to abstraction in which he excelled as colorist. After World War II he co-founded La Jeune Peinture Belge. Van Lint experimented with geometric abstraction for a decade, and then, influenced by the French painter Bazaine, he started his lyrical abstraction period. He participated in the demonstrations and exhibitions of the CoBrA group. In 1958, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation gave him a prize and in 1960 he became a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium. In the 1960s, he introduced Hergé to abstract painting and provided him with private lessons for one year.
​Roger Dudant ( Tournai 1929 - Péruwelz 2008 ) participated in 1955 in the "International Exhibition of Contemporary Art" at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh and in 1956 in the exhibition organized by Belgian Shell at the Palais des Beaux-Arts. In 1961 the artist had a personal exhibition at the "Albert Landry Galleries" in New York. In the 1970's he was a founding member, with Zéphir Busine, of the "Hainaut 5" group of artists and became Professor at the "La Cambre Institute" in Brussels, succeeding to his close friend and Professor Paul Delvaux. In 2012 Group 2 Gallery paid tribute to Dudant with a one-man show "The beauty of natural, urban & industrial landscapes".
Lismonde ( 1908 - 2001 ) is justly considered as a master drawer in a universe dominated by black & white. The artist created during his career an exceptionnaly fine series of ink and charcoal drawings on paper, both figurative and abstract. Part of his oeuvre is inspired by factories and industrial landscapes in Belgium.
Heerbrant (Brussels 1912 - 1982) was a self-made man, figurative and abstract at the same time, which was rather upsetting the art critics, since they were unable to “classify” his work. Heerbrant appears to be indebted to Paul Klee and was familiar with the work of Victor Brauner, whom he met in Paris. However, he followed his own path as an artist and created a world of his own.​  READ  MORE
Gilbert Swimberghe was born in Bruges in 1927. He studied at the Fine Arts Academies in Bruges ( 1940-46 ) and in Brussels ( 1947-48 ). His first works were figurative in the flemish expressionist tradition ( still lifes, portraits and landscapes ). In the 1950's his work evolved gradually to full abstraction. Swimberghe has participated in the movement of monochrome pictorial and sculptural expression of the late fifties and sixties, like the Zero group ( Mack, Piene, Uecker, Leblanc ), Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Yves Klein and Jef Verheyen. Prof. Elias wrote that the artist continously investigated the possibilities of working with only one color or a limited combination of multiple shades of that colour. His work is very recognisable is in its limitation and economy of means ( minimalism, less is more ). The present exhibition focuses on the so-called "Grey" and "Blue" periods ( starting in the 1990's ) of the artist's career, featuring geometrical forms, especially the triangle.
Gilbert Decock was born in Knokke at the Belgian coast in 1928. He studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Bruges. Since the end of the 1950's the artist painted elementary forms such as circles, squares and triangles which are dialoguing on his canvases. His paintings and sculptures can be qualified as minimalist, ascetic, austere, symbolic, meditative and spiritual. In 1965 Decock became a founding member of the group "D 4" together with E. Bergen, V. Noël and M. Verdren. In 1967 Jo Delahaut joined the group whose name was changed into "Geoform". Decock executed several monumental projects in his long career for Distrigas, the Knokke Casino and the Metro station "Arts-Loi" in Brussels.
A fine monography about the artist by Dr Serge Goyens de Heusch was published by Lannoo ( Tielt, Belgium ) in 1995.
Albert Rubens, born in West Flanders in 1944, discovered in the 1960s the cubic form and its infinite potentials, not only as a flat surface but also on a three-dimensional level. Four distinctive features dominate the artist's work.  First there is a geometrical and concrete language of images. Secondly Rubens has been painting ever since exclusively in black on a snow white surface. Thirdly Rubens uses mathematics when preparing his compositions and makes a detailed study in pencil in his notebook before starting to paint, mostly in acrylic, on canvas. Finally, the artist invariably makes a whole series of works based on a very methodical approach.Rubens' works have been widely exhibited since the  mid-1960's, both in Belgium ( a.o. the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels in 1986 with Walter Leblanc ) and abroad ( Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Russia e.a. )
​Group 2 Gallery has shown Rubens works in several thematic exhibitions : "The Power of Black & White" in 2014, "Geometric abstraction" and "From Rubens to Michaux" in 2016
Marcase was born in Waregem ( West Flanders ) in 1946. He studied at the St-Lucas Institute in Ghent and at the Fine Arts Academy in Deinze, Belgium. He was awarded the prize of the "Young Belgian Painters" in 1978 and the "Grand Prize of Rome" in 1979. The artist, who insists that he's not an abstract painter, declares that his work is the result of the confrontation between nature and culture. Professor Elias considers "Serendipity" as key in explaining Marcase's modus operandi : for forty years already he has been finding what he's not been looking for. The same principle applies to the viewer looking at Marcase's paintings which strike by their simplicity, serenity and spirituality. The very typical Marcase line evokes the outer space. The difference between his typical lines and a foggy landscape is often quite small. The lines in his recent works are the reflections of Marcase's inner world and emerge from his body and from his inner soul.  

 

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