Frits van den Berghe (1883-1939)

Galerie d´Art Le Centaure, Brussels

Collection Mélot du Dy, Brussels

Collection Komkommer, Antwerp

Frits van den Berghe grew up in an intellectual environment at the end of the 19th century/begin of the 20th century. Like his friend Gustave de Smet, with whom he worked closely, almost until the end of his live, he began his painting career with a compromise between Symbolism and Impressionism, working sometimes in Gent, sometimes near the artists´colony at St. Martin Laethem.

During his exile in the Netherlands (1914-1922) Van den Berghe realised a break in the direction of Expressionism. He tried to find a balance in his paintings between composition and geometry at one side and the connection with nature and life on the other side. Until the mid-twenties the visual reality, although sometimes strongly transformed, was his basic principle. He still painted his usual themes like the human figure and landscape.

After 1925 Van den Berghe started to paint works with a special meaning, they touched the world of the subconscious. The reality is dissappearing, not the intensity, but the conciousness.

At the begin of 1928 there is only chaos and the psychological complexity of the human kind in the paintings of Frits van den Berghe. His works are getting a new form and a new content from that moment on. Evolution, rise and fall are becoming central conceptions in his works

Between 1928 and 1931 he shows with great passion above views in around ten flowerstill-lifes. `Fleurs` is cleary painted in this period. In the painting we see a colourfull and luxuriant vegetation in different stadia of transformation. The flowers are filling the canvas as if they are still growning. Frits Van den Berghe wants to break, in this painting,  the borders between the visual world and the irrational world, between life and dead. This work shows tragedy,  extreme melancholy and emptiness but all this gives the works also an extreme powerfull radiance.