Double Portrait. Flemish Symbolists James Ensor and Jules de Bruycker
Location: 3rd floor, B-wing
The oeuvre of these two world-renowned artists from Belgium are contrasting, and yet extremely characteristic representations of the Flemish and Belgian art and culture of the 19th and 20th centuries. The exhibition is accompanied by a wonderfully illustrated catalogue in Estonian and English.
“Ensor is a world-famous painter, who enjoyed the reputation of being a leading modernist artist, despite the fact that his visionary and contradictory art was unusual and that he had more enemies than friends in art circles. Many artists, de Bruycker among them, were notably influenced by his work,” said the curator of the exhibition, Tiina Abel. “While Ensor was a critic of human nature, de Bruycker mainly interpreted the milieu of Ghent in his works of art.”
James Ensor (1860–1949) completed his best works in the years 1886–1891, and they are among the cream of 19th-century graphic art. Ensor was captivated by permanent copper plates, printing inks and the opportunity to make a number of proofs. The recurring characters in the artist’s oeuvre – demons and spirits, Christ and the Devil, angels and death, human sins and idyllic nature – seem a natural part of Ensor’s works, both on canvas and paper.
Jules de Bruycker (1870–1945) considered graphic art his only means of expression, extensively studied the different possibilities it offered, and employed his knowledge skilfully in large-scale etchings. He became an interpreter of the people and scenes of his beloved home-town of Ghent, and was generally enthralled by the everyday life of the working class and the poor.
“The Kumu Art Museum deserves praise for the decision to display these two fascinatingly contrasting and peculiar artists in one exhibition,” said the director of the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts, Robert Hoozee. “The Ghent museum owns the complete collection of Ensor’s prints, which were acquired in 1998 from the heirs of Auguste Taevernier, a collector and compiler of the catalogue of Ensor’s etchings. De Bruycker’s first works of art were added to the museum’s collection in 1913, although the majority of etchings on display at Kumu were left to the Ghent museum in 1932 by Jules Singelijn-Buydens, a collector of Ghentish origin and a friend of the artist.”
The legacy of the two artists exhibited at Kumu contains more than 120 paintings, drawings and prints. Most of the works are from the collection of the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts, although four of James Ensor’s valuable paintings come from the collections of the art museum Mu.ZEE in Ostend, Charleroi Museum of Fine Arts and Ooidonk Fine Arts Gallery.
At the exhibition, we will present a short pseudo-documentary by the Belgian artist Guillaume Bijl, entitled James Ensor in Ostend, which was completed in the year 2000 and was lent to us by the Museum of Contemporary Art S.M.A.K. in Ghent.
The exhibition takes place within the framework of a cultural cooperation agreement between the Republic of Estonia and the Government of Flanders.
Curator: Tiina Abel
