Jean-Jacques Gailliard is a student at the Fine Arts Academy in Brussels. He also receives lessons from his father, the painter Frans Gailliard. He travels frequently through Europe with his father at the beginning of his career. Beginning in 1920, he remains in Paris for four years, where he meets the most important painters and writers of his time. With this, Gailliard develops into one of the first Belgian abstract painters and a key figure in the Belgian Modernism before 1940. Quickly his work, however, is characterised by the duality between the abstract and the figurative. As such, a completely personal style emerges that is related to Belgian Surrealism.

Source: House of Literature, Antwerp

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No biography available.

No biography available.

No biography available.

Beginning in 1912, Jos Léonard makes works in various artistic styles (Art Nouveau, Futurism and Cubism). He draws realistic portraits and abstracted human figures as well as futuristic city impressions. He is a friend of Paul van Ostaijen and various other representatives of the artistic avant-garde in Antwerp. Steadily he develops his own modernistic image language, which has a leaning towards Russian constructivism. In 1918, along with the painter Jozef Peeters he establishes the group Moderne Kunst.

Beginning in 1924, he engages in the graphic sector. He designs posters and makes book designs for various, chiefly Flemish-leaning publishers. After his death, his work is exhibited at overview exhibitions in the Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, among other places. 

Source: House of Literature, Antwerp

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Michel Seuphor (pseudonym of Fernand-Louis Berckelaers) is one of the key figures from the art scene of the interbellum. This author, essayist, art historian and critic is one of the most reputable advocates of Abstract Art. He was at the inception of avant-garde groups and publications. In addition to his literary oeuvre, he builds a respectable career as an illustrative artist. Seuphor built a bridge between the generations with his multi-faceted activities and strove to keep the original meanings of abstract art alive.

He begins as a radical Flemish propagandist in Antwerp, but he quickly turns into an international author. Beginning in 1922, along with Jozef Peeters he leads the avant-garde journal Het Overzicht with contributions from the European pioneers of Constructivism. After a few brief stays in Paris, Seuphor leaves his hometown definitively in 1925 in order to settle in Paris. The group Cercle et Carré, which he establishes in 1929 with the painter Joaquín Torres-Garcia (1874 – 1949), brings artists from various disciplines together in order to protect Abstract Art via a journal, manifestos and exhibitions. As such, in 1930 Seuphor organises the first exhibition that is exclusively devoted to abstract art. In a short period of time, he builds up a very extensive network from the chief players of the avant-garde: from Fernand Léger (1881 – 1955) and Jean (Hans) Arp (1886 – 1966) to Jean Cocteau (1889 – 1963) and Sonia Delaunay (1885 – 1979) and Piet Mondriaan (1872 – 1944). With the latter he is very good friends. He even writes his first monograph. After WWII, a whole series of exhaustive publications on the history of abstract art follows, which are viewed as reference works in the literature on art. They were translated numerous times and reprinted and are disseminated over the whole world.

Between 1926 and 1929, Seuphor makes a number of geometrical abstract gouaches in the style of Mondriaan, though destroys most of them. Only after the 1930’s shall Seuphor devote more time to drawing. During a stay in Switzerland, his first uni-linear drawings appear. During Seuphor’s reclusive life in the Cévennes of southern France, between 1934 and 1948, his illustrative creativity is on the wane because they are overshadowed by his literary pursuits. A new impulse arises beginning in 1951 with the so-called ‘dessins à lacunes’ or ‘gap drawings’. In these pen and ink drawings horizontal straight lines dominate, which are at varying distances from each other, made with a free hand. Via interruptions in the parallel lines, blank forms appear that seem to be released from the background. They are executed in hundreds of variations. Starting in 1953, the first collage drawings appear and Seuphor begins to add colour. He creates ever larger series, followed by assemblages and ultimately applied art, with tapestries and ceramics, illustrating the evolution in which he explores the boundaries of space. Ultimately Seuphor finds a synthesis between his literary and illustrative endeavours with his ‘tableaux-poèmes’ that he shall work on until the end of his life.

1901

Birth of Fernand-Louis Berckelaers on 10 March 1901 in Borgerhout.

1919 - 1921

Seuphor debuts as a Dutch-language writer. He founds two, small-scale Flemish youth papers: De Klauwaert and Roeland. The artist uses the pseudonym Seuphor for the first time, an anagram of Orpheus. Berckelaers/Seuphor establishes a new journal along with Geert Pynenburg (1896 – 1980): Het Overzicht.

1922 - 1923 

In December, Seuphor travels along with Jozef Peeters, the new co-Director of Het Overzicht, to Berlin. These trips abroad result in a rapidly growing international avant-garde network. This is reflected by the number of foreign colleagues of Het Overzicht (including, among others: Robert Delaunay, Filippo Tomasso Marinetti, Tristan Tzara, Paul Dermée, Luigi Russolo, Wassily Kandinsky, Rudolf Belling, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, Kurt Schwitters, Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, László Moholy-Nagy, and so forth).

1925

Het Overzicht ceases to exist in February 1925. The last edition, Cabaret, is a bundling of the numbers 22, 23 and 24 and contains Mariage filmé, Seuphors Dada-esque reportage of the marriage of his friend Paul Joostens. In March, Seuphor heads out definitively to Paris.

1926 - 1928

Seuphor makes his first abstract drawings.

In 1927, along with the writer Paul Dermée (1886 – 1951), he publishes Documents internationaux de l’esprit nouveau. Within that context he organises eleven literary evenings in the gallery Au Sacre du Printemps with important speakers such as Kurt Schwitters (1887 – 1948) and Filippo Marinetti (1876 – 1944). Seuphor exhibits work there from, among others, Ida Thal, André Kertész (1894 – 1985), though the painter-farmer Felix De Boeck, J.P. Flouquet and graphic artist Victor Delhez (1902 – 1985) also receive a place on the venue.

Collaboration with Piet Mondriaan. Together they make a ‘tableau-poème’.

1929

At the behest of the publisher Emil Szitya (1886 – 1964), Seuphor visits a number of prominent Flemish artists in the summer and writes Un renouveau de la peinture en Belgique flamande.

Seuphor experiments extensively with photography. He makes a fifteen-count set of gouaches that strongly exhibit affinities with the work of Piet Mondriaan, of which most of them he quickly destroys.

1930

Along with Joaquín Torres-García, Seuphor founds the constructivist artists’ group ‘Cercle et Carré’. The group exhibition takes place in April in the ‘Galerie 23’ of Paris. Amongst the 46 participating artists are Jean Arp, Kurt Schwitters, Piet Mondriaan, Wassilly Kandinsky, Le Corbusier (1887 – 1965), Joaquín Torres García, Fernand Léger and Georges Vantongerloo, inter alia. Seuphors contribution to the exhibition consists of a ‘tableau-poème’. Seuphor also performs editorial work for the publication of the three journal publications that appear under the title Cercle et Carré. 

1931 - 1943

Along with the Polish writer Jan Brzekowski (1903 – 1983), he sets up the exhibition ‘Collection Internationale d’Art Nouveau’ in Łódź (Poland). Seuphor subsequently returns to the tumultuous artistic life to some extent. He begins to draw again and assembles his notes on contemporary art.

Seuphor marries Suzanne Plasse on 19 April 1934. The young couple buys a run-down house in Anduze (Gard) in the south of France that they gradually fix up.

Seuphor profiles himself expressively as anti-Fascist and anti-Communist. Later he becomes involved with the Belgian resistance in France.

In the meanwhile he begins to write his key novel on the art life in Antwerp and Paris from the 1920’s: Les evasions d’Olivier Trickmansholm.

1946 - 1949

Willem Sandberg (1897 – 1984), the Director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, invites Seuphor to work together on a large retrospective on Piet Mondriaan. At the request of Aimé Maeght (1906 – 1981), Seuphor works on L’art abstrait, ses origins, ses premiers maîtres, which is published in 1949. This marks the beginning of Seuphors career as a historiographer of Abstract Art.

1950 - 1956

In 1950, Seuphor stays successively in Holland and New York in order to prepare a legacy work on Piet Mondriaan, which shall appear in 1956 under the title, Piet Mondrian, sa vie, son oeuvre.

After a hospital stay in Paris, he makes a large series of ‘desolate’ line drawings. He makes his first ‘dessins à lacunes à traits horizontaux’ or ‘gap drawings’. Seuphor has his first successes in applied art. He designs tapestries for the Provinciehuis in Arnhem and for the Belgian government.

1957 - 1958

Hazan publishes Seuphor’s Dictionnaire de la peinture abstraite. For this occasion Seuphor then organises the exhibition ‘Cinquante ans de la peinture abstraite’ in the Creuze gallery.

Seuphor’s ‘gap drawings’ reach their zenith and are shown in Vienna and Cologne alongside work by Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber (1889 – 1943).

1959

La sculpture de ce siècle. Dictionnaire de la sculpture moderne appears in the Swiss Neuchâtel. Seuphor makes his first ‘ensembles’. In Paris, his tapestries, drawings and collage drawings are exhibited at the Denise René gallery. In 1926 Elisabeth De Saedeleer (1902 – 1972) produces a new series of tapestries after his design in Flanders.

1963

De Abstracte Schilderkunst in Vlaanderen is presented in the Flemish Opera in Antwerp. It becomes a standard piece on abstraction in Belgium. The initiative taker is the benefactor Maurits Naessens (1908 – 1982), the Director of the Bank of Paris and the Netherlands.

1965

The ‘Manufacture de Sèvres’ produces two-metre tall vases after Seuphors’ design and also the ‘Manufacture nationale des Gobelins’ makes wall tapestries on the basis of his drawings. Seuphor obtains the French nationality. Les Éditions du Seuil publishes Le Style et le Cri.

1976

In collaboration with the Belgian Mercator Foundation, the Centre Pompidou (Paris) publishes a substantial monograph on Seuphor. This monograph also then serves as a catalogue for a large retrospective in the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.

1996

Seuphor’s wife, Suzanne Plasse, dies in the Hôpital Boucicaut in Paris.

1997

The Ludwig Museum in Koblenz organises an extensive exhibition on Seuphor’s illustrative work.

1999

On 12 February Fernand Louis Berckelaers dies in the Hôpital Laënnec in Paris.

Sergio Servellón

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Paul Joostens is one of the most idiosyncratic avant-garde artists in Belgium. Joostens is important within a variety of media: paintings, drawings, collages, assemblages, and even prose and poetry. After a traditional training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, he goes in search of new pictorial mediums. As such, he is one of the first collage artists in Belgium. 

Just as with many generational contemporaries, Joostens goes through the successive phases of modern art: from late-Impressionism to expressionistic experiments. Under the influence of Cubism and Futurism, he adopts the constructivist style. In 1919, he discovers Dada, a frame of mind that shall stay with him throughout his life. Primarily his assemblages create a sensation in the early 1920’s. He belongs to the intimate group centred on Paul Van Ostaijen (1896 - 1928), along with the brothers Oscar (1887 - 1970) and Floris Jespers (1889 - 1965), with whom he establishes the Bond zonder Gezegeld Papier.  

Paul Joostens is a very individualistic personage throughout his entire life that refuses to cling to one style and to associate himself with certain artistic groups. His cynical, stubborn nature also manifests itself in sharp critiques and letters. Although counted amongst the pioneers of abstract art in Belgium, Joostens never severs the connection with the figuration, nor narrative. During the entire evolution in his collage art (from ‘paste technique’, ‘cartons collés’ and ‘papiers métallises’ to ‘photo-montages’), Joostens always involves the viewer in his wholly own universe that is shot through with the rich Flemish painting tradition and the image culture of his time.

After his Cubist and Dadaist period, he distances himself in 1926 from the avant-garde in order to paint in a ‘Neo-Gothic’ manner, inspired by the Flemish Primitives. And, although beginning in 1955 he makes Dadaist works again, two themes dominate his oeuvre: the feminine and the mystique. Both elements were emphasised with a double meaning, such as the Madonna with the features of a film star. The woman, at one time the holy virgin or others as prostitute and often in both configurations, will play a central role in many compositions, such as in the later series of the Poezeloezen, as he called the female figures from the Antwerp red-light district. 

1889

Birth of Paulus Johannes Joostens in Antwerp on 18 June.

1902

Goes to school at the Jesuit College of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw in Antwerp. At 13, he visits the exhibition Les Primitifs flamands et l’art ancien in Bruges.

1906 - 1912

Follows the evening course at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts in 1906. Interns with architect Max Winders. Beginning in 1911, he continues his studies at the Higher Institute within the Academy. Amongst his fellow students are a few other future avant-gardists: Jan Kimeneij (1889 – 1981), Jozef Peeters and the brothers Oscar and Floris Jespers.

1913 - 1915

Publishes illustrations with the poetry debut of Paul Neuhuys (1897 – 1984), La Source et L’Infini. The drawings cause a polemic that shall lead to the expulsion of Neuhuys from the Atheneum.

1916

Flees with his family for a while to Ghent. Works in an impressionistic, pointillist style. Joostens becomes friends with Paul Van Ostaijen. He reviews Joostens work for the first time in the Christmas exhibition of the Art union in Het Toneel.

1917 - 1919

In the Wijngaardstraat in Antwerp he has a studio along with Jan Kiemeneij, Jozef Peeters and Edmond van Dooren (1896 – 1965).

In March of 1917, Joostens has his first individual exhibition in the Art union. The exhibition travels to the Galerie Giroux. He makes a monumental collage that is preserved today in disparate fragments.

At the end of 1917, along with Paul Van Ostaijen, Floris and Oscar Jespers, he establishes the Bond zonder Gezegeld Papier. Van Ostaijen introduces Joostens to the principles of Cubism. Van Ostaijen publishes Over het werk van Paul Joostens in Vlaamsch Leven.

A design of Joostens for Van Ostaijen’s bundle of poetry Het Sienjaal is condemned.

In 1919 an album with ten reproductions of Joostens with an introduction by Van Ostaijen appears in De Sikkel.

1920 - 1923

Corresponds with Prosper De Troyer (1880 – 1961) and Filippo Marinetti (1876 – 1944). Realises collages with a variety of materials such as pieces of fabric, paper and metal paper.

In July 1920, Joostens is banished by Van Ostaijen, who is in exile, from the ‘H. Kubistiese en Flamingantiese Kerk’.

In October 1920, Joostens exhibits along with Prosper De Troyer, Jespers and Peeters in the exhibition Oeuvres cubists et néocubistes in the Art Contemporain studio. The exhibition is organised by Sélection in Brussels.

The collaborating organisation for applied arts Novy is established by Joostens, Jos Léonard (1892 – 1957) and the brothers Jespers.

Publishes graphic work in Ruimte and Sélection, among others. In 1921, Joostens’ Dadaist inspired text Salopes appears in Ça Ira. 

Exhibits at the 2^nd Congress for Modern Art as well as at the Exposition organisée par la Revue Ça Ira Cubo-futurist and abstract works.

In 1923, a large retrospective takes place in the Zaal Renis in Antwerp. Georges Marlier (1898 – 1968) ensures for the first monographic publication on Joostens’ illustrative work.

1924 - 1929

Travels to Paris and marries Madeleine Millot (Mado) there. Michel Seuphor is witness and immortalises the wedding with his Dadaist report Mariage filmé. The marriage lasts until 1931.

Joostens comes into contact with the Belgian Surrealists René Magritte and E.L.T. Mesens (1903 – 1971). In 1926, he stops with the avant-garde experiments and follows the path of a personal mystical Neo-gothic world. In 1929 he aligns himself with the Catholic Pilgrim movement where the mild modernists Eugeen Yoors (1879 – 1975) and Flor Van Reeth (1884 – 1975) are active, among others.

1932 - 1939

After Michel Seuphor publishes fragments from their correspondences, Joostens breaks off the friendship.

Beginning in 1937, he makes collages that he calls ‘photomontages’.

In 1939, he publishes La Vierge Boréale, suivi de Christ.

1944 - 1945

On the occasion of his solo exhibition in the Stedelijk Kunstsalon, the publication Paul Joostens appears in the series Kunstenaars van Heden. During the V-bombings he remains for two months with the family van Grootel in Hoogboom.

1947 - 1956

Is operated on in the Sint Camille Hospital in Antwerp. The ambiguous Poezeloezen series originates in this period.

1957

Exhibits an overview of his collages during Papiers collés 1920-1957 in the Galerie Saint-Laurent in Brussels.

1958 - 1960

Participates in the collage exhibition of the Centre International de l’Actualité Fantastique et Magique (CIAFMA) in Antwerp, Brussels and Paris. After various moves, he settles in the Venusstraat 44 in Antwerp where he shall stay until his death.

1960

Paul Joostens dies, as a lonely, forlorn man, on 24 March in the Stuivenberg Hospital in Antwerp. His oeuvre is scattered after his death, despite the fact that Joostens himself provided a foundation to promote his literary and illustrative work.

Sergio Servellón

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Karel Maes is one of the few Belgian expressive artists at the beginning of the 1920’s who found a connection with the Netherlandish movement De Stijl. However less prominent than his colleagues Georges Vantongerloo and Huib Hoste, Maes gains recognition from the great frontman Theo Van Doesburg (1883 - 1931). For a while, Maes is even the Belgian ‘representative’ of Van Doesburg’s international movement. The highpoint is in 1922 with the signing of the manifesto of the Konstruktivistische Internationale Beeldende Arbeidsgemeenschap in Weimar. He does this in the presence of Van Doesburg, El Lissitzky (1890 - 1941), Max Burchartz (1887 - 1961) and Hans Richter (1888 - 1976). The artist is present at nearly all major avant-garde exhibitions where the Pure Plasticism is active (Antwerp, Bruges, Geneva, Brussels, Monza, etc.).

Karel Maes, trained as an educator, chooses for an artistic career at a very young age. After he briefly tests the boundaries of various painting styles (Impressionism, Cubism and Fauvism), Maes turns his back on the figurative beginning in 1920. Along with Jozef Peeters and others, he then makes up a part of the first Belgian generation of geometric, abstract painters. His works are characterised by a flat layering of rectangles, circles and triangles.

The oeuvre of the young Karel Maes (circa 1918 - 1925) is the result of a multifarious, technical development. His oeuvre consists of paintings, drawings, posters, linocuts, woodcuts and theatre decors. He designs illustrations for numerous Belgian avant-garde publications such as Lumière, Ruimte, Ça Ira, Het Overzicht, De Driehoek and 7 Arts. In 1924 he collaborates with his brother Jef on the realisation of a furniture series for the garden district of Cité Moderne in Sint-Agatha-Berchem. Maes has a desire to take on the applied arts and combines his plastic and graphic work with the rendering of furniture, tapestries and glass windows. After his marriage in 1926, thanks to his father-in-law Herman Teirlinck, he becomes Director at the Brussels’s furniture company Atelier Victor De Cunsel. Towards the end of the 1920’s, Maes becomes more and more isolated from the art world. This, and his prejudice for cultural collaboration after WWII, explains why his oeuvre is never really known. Yet, the artist pushes his multi-sided work further, whereby he is inspired by the prevailing Surrealist and Expressionist tendencies at the time, though likewise never completely abandons the abstract. With his return from the Belgian Congo (end of the 1960’s), Maes takes up the geometric compositions again from the early years and also makes new lyrical-abstract work. At the end of his life, Maes is inclined more towards traditional work.

A reconstruction of Maes’s development is a difficult task. There are many hiatuses and open questions. Twice, large portions of his work were destroyed and he often neglected to date his work. Nevertheless, Karel Maes is one of the major representatives of the ‘cold’ abstract in Belgium.

1900-1915

Karel Maes is born on 25 December 1900 in Mol. He is the son of an antiquarian, restorer and woodcutter Hendrik Maes and Maria Baten. In 1910 Hendrik Maes travels with his family to Brussels and establishes himself at Ruisbroekstraat 74. In 1913 Karel Maes follows lessons for one year at the Brussels Academy. He befriends Pierre-Louis Flouquet, René Magritte and Victor Servranckx.

Beginning in 1915, Maes follows lessons at the Karel Buls Normaalschool in Brussels. Herman Teirlinck (1879 - 1967) is one of his teachers and E.L.T. Mesens (1903 - 1971) is one of his classmates.

1919

He works at the Centre d’Art in Brussels, along with Maurice Casteels (1890 - 1962) and Pierre-Louis Flouquet, among others.

1920

Maes works as an educator in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek and as drawing instructor in Bruges.

He is present at the lecture of Theo Van Doesburg, organised by the publication Le Geste in the Centre d’Art. In October 1920, he participates in the exhibition of the First Congress of Modern Art in Antwerp, where he meets Jozef Peeters for the first time.

Takes part in the Exposition internationale d’art moderne in Geneva.

1921

Karel Maes regularly produces linocuts for modernist publications such as Lumière, Ruimte, Ça Ira, Het Overzicht, De Driehoek and 7 Arts. 

In March, along with Magritte and Mesens, Maes meets Theo Van Doesburg in Brussels during his travels through Europe. He meets with Van Doesburg again after his lecture on 30 November 1921 in Brussels. Maes receives and declines a proposal from the Parisian gallery L’Effort Moderne by Léonce Rosenberg. He was nominated by Van Doesburg.

1922

Participates in the exhibition of the Second Congress of Modern Art in Antwerp.

He gives a lecture during the Third Congress of Modern Art in Bruges. The lecture, entitled De kunstenaar beeldt niet uit, maar beeldt is Maes’s vision of the two thousand years of the history of art. Fernant Berckelaers, later known as Michel Seuphor, writes a review on this speech in Het Overzicht. Maes is co-founder of 7 Arts, for which he writes many reviews on expressive art.

Karel Maes corresponds with Van Doesburg about the representation of De Stijl in Belgium. He signs the manifesto of the Konstruktivistische Internationale Beeldende Arbeidsgemeenschap (K.I.) in Weimar on 25 September 1922.

1923

Participates with the booth of 7 Arts/L’Equerre during the exhibition Les arts belges d’esprit nouveau in Brussels. Here, among others, he shows his poster De vertraagde film, made for a theatre piece by Herman Teirlinck.

The publication Mecano criticises Maes because of his artistic and Flemish-leaning theories in the article Waar de maes K en Scheldwoorden vloeien. The article is apparently written by Mesens, who for some time lived discontentedly with Maes.

1924

He designs, along with his brother Jef, furniture for the Cité Moderne in Sint-Agatha-Berchem. The Cité Moderne is a design by the architect Victor Bourgeois. 

1925

Formation of the group L’Assaut along with Jean-Jaques Gailliard (1890 - 1976), Felix De Boeck and Pierre-Louis Flouquet, among others.

Participates in the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris and at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs Modernes in Monza, Italy.

1926

Marries Stella, daughter of Herman Teirlinck in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek on 4 August 1926. He takes on a management position within the furniture company Atelier Victor De Cunsel in Brussels.

1927 - 1930

Takes part in the exhibition by the group L’Assaut in Brussels and in Overveen in the Netherlands.

Builds a house in Dilbeek according to his own design. Works along with architect Victor Bourgeois on the double villa in Sint-Idesbald, intended for the Maes family and the Teirlinck family. He establishes himself as an independent furniture maker in Brussels.

Births of his sons Jan (1928) and Piet (1930).

1944 - 1949

Is imprisoned due to political collaboration. He was a member of DeVlag, an organisation that fought during the Second World War for the assimilation of Flanders into Hitler’s German Reich. In 1947, he is given an 8-year prison sentence. In 1949 he is conditionally released.

1950 - 1967

Maes departs for Leopoldstad (Congo), where he establishes Menuiserie-Ebénisterie Maes et Fils. He and his son Piet decline a contract from the furniture company Knoll.

In 1963 Stella Teirlinck dies in Leopoldstad.

In 1966, he is detained and his work is seized by the Congolese authorities. Maes returns definitively to Belgium and settles in Assent, and later in Koersel, with the family of his son Piet.

Takes up old compositions again from the 1920’s and paints lyrical-abstract works.

1974

Karel Maes dies in Brussels on 11 July 1974.

Sergio Servellón

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Leopold Andreas van Ostaijen is the seventh and last son of emigrate Dutchman Hendrik Pieter van Ostaijen, professional plumber, and the Flemish Maria Antoinetta Berben-Engelen. After no luck in three upper schools, he goes to the Royal Athenaeum in Antwerp. There he participates in the association of Antwerp Athenaeum students, the Vlaamsche Bond. At 18, he leaves school, without a diploma, and a few months later finds a small job as a clerk at the Antwerp City Hall.

At the outbreak of World War I, the Van Ostaijen family flees to Holland for a short time. Once back, the writing clerk joins (again) in the fray of the cultural and social life where he meets painters and other writers.

As a journalist, Van Ostaijen worked with such papers as Carolus, Vlaamsche Gazet, Het Tooneel, De Antwerpse Courant, Ons Land and De Goedendag. Although he originally was moderate in expression, there are quickly radical Flemish-leaning views to be seen in his journalistic pieces. During the wartime years, he becomes radical at the political level.

In April 1916, Music-Hall, his first volume of poetry appears, with confessional poetry, but also with new, lively poems that know how to capture modern life. The volume enjoys great success, and after Music-Hall, he is seen as the most modern Flemish poet.

Two years later, not long after the armistice, Het sienjaal appears. The volume contains humanitarian-expressionistic poetry, partially written under the influence of the work by young German expressionist poets. The Flemish Movement also continues to play a major part in Van Ostaijen’s poetry. Not long afterwards, Van Ostaijen heads off to Berlin with his girlfriend Emma Clément: he has to serve out a sentence for catcalling Cardinal Mercier during a procession in Antwerp in 1917. Moreover, he had collaborated with activist publications and in 1918 he was a candidate to become second in command of the Flemish state police.

Berlin becomes a trial for Van Ostaijen; at the same time he is highly productive in writing. On the personal level, he endures a crisis. The activists have lost the fight. The German November revolution fails almost literally outside his window. His relationship falls apart and the poverty and self-imposed exile do not make life any easier. 

He processes the wartime years and his personal crisis into poetry that is different in tone and form than his earlier poems. Between 1919 and 1921, Bezette Stad and the unpublished manuscript De Feesten van Angst en Pijn come about practically simultaneously. Nihilism, typography and Dada, the modern urban living, the war, advertising slogans, films, Christianity, higher and lower arts all receive a place in this poetry.

Van Ostaijen also writes grotesque pieces in Berlin. The screenplay of De bankroet jazz and essays and critiques are published in the newspaper Ruimte, among others.

In 1921, Van Ostaijen returns to Flanders. He announces himself to the authorities, receives amnesty, but does not get out of his delayed duty of service. He participates for a year or so in the Belgian occupying army in Germany, in Issum, and again undergoes a serious crisis. For two years he scarcely writes anything.

In 1923, Van Ostaijen returns home. One year later be becomes a seller in the bookstore Iris and begins to publish poems that he shall later assemble into a volume under the name Het eerste boek van Schmoll.  In 1925, he moves to Brussels in order to manage an art store there. He gives a few lectures on painting and lyric and becomes acquainted with Gaston Burssens and Eddy du Perron. He writes sonorous and whimsical poems that he places under the rubric ‘pure lyric’. When tuberculosis of the lung lays him low, he suffers a collapse. In 1927, he stays a while in Viersel in the Kempen until there is a place in a certain sanatorium Le Vallon in Miavoye-Anthée. During his stay there he remains literarily productive. He continues to collaborate with Vlaamsche Arbeid and along with Burssens and Du Perron he forms the publication Avontuur that only exists for a short while as well, coinciding with the death of Van Ostaijen on 18 March 1928.

Presently, Van Ostaijen lies in the honorary patch of the Antwerp Schoonselhof, by way of and underneath the monument made by Oscar Jespers, which depicts an angel that is laying its ear upon the grave of the poet in order to listen.

Source: Paul van Ostaijengenootschap (www.paulvanostaijen.be)

No biography available.