Foreword
Dominique Savelkoul, Joost Declercq
Constant Permeke: Beyond Expressionism
Inne Gheeraert
Permeke in England, the Crucial Years
Jan Ceuleers
Galleries, Journals and Permeke’s International Reputation in the 1920s
Inne Gheeraert
Constant Permeke in Brazil
Felipe Martinez Sevilhano
Permeke in Context
Franz W. Kaiser
Permeke’s Modernist Artist’s Residence
Anneleen Cassiman
Permeke as Sculptor
Inneke Schwickert, Wendy Van Hoorde
Permeke
In early October 1914, Constant Permeke sustained serious injury during the fighting at Duffel. He was evacuated via Antwerp and Ostend to England, and was later reunited with his wife and mother in Folkestone. After a spell in a London hospital, he moved with his family to the countryside in March 1915: first to Stanton St Bernard in Wiltshire, then in March 1916 to Chardstock in East Devon, and then in 1917 to the south west, closer to the sea, to Sidmouth and Sidford. During the war, he became a father three times: to his daughter Beatty and his two sons Johnnie and Paul. He returned to Belgium with his family in April 1919 and once again settled in Ostend. Aside from a few sporadic contacts with other Belgian artists in exile in Britain, Constant Permeke led an isolated life. His correspondence with the exiles in the Netherlands was confined to a small number of letters. He took part in several group exhibitions, and in late 1918 sold two paintings to the Dutch businessman Jacob de Graaff, who lived in London and also owned works by other Belgian artists. Permeke got to know him through Hippolyte Daeye.
Permeke said little about his time in England. In a letter to the painter Isidoor Opsomer 1 in the early 1930s, concerning attempts to support the artists during the crisis years, he looks back on this other difficult period: “Do you see anyone discussing Permeke there? At that time, I painted The Stranger, The Cider Drinker, and numerous works on cardboard, and all my work from England was effectively hidden behind them. I did not exist. Permeke was obliged to do everything alone, and that is what he did. There I was, out in the world with my elderly mother, wife and three children to support. But all I got was an invalidity allowance of 2 shillings 6d a day until they wanted to take off my leg. This was how my art was refined. When I came home, I found there was nothing left; and it cost me blood, sweat and tears to get where I am today. But that is the foundation upon which my life rests. Whether you like it or not – it is there. Nothing can change that.” 2
A letter to Arthur Cornette 3 from the same period in response to his essay about Permeke takes a different tone: “I read – and with so much pleasure I recalled – in my memory at least, my happy period as a painter! In England, when I was hobbling around on crutches and my wife was carrying the bucket of water around my temperas, including yours – painted by the dozen – and in the Langestraat after the war, and all those hoary old fishermen, that time when we had not yet come up against life’s seriousness and the children were still small – carefree.” 4
Most commentators regard his English years as an ante-room before Permeke started on the real work. The fact that he increasingly produced atypical paintings in England is seen as a mystery, a sign of serious doubt, or is ascribed to a slew of influences. These range from Cubo-Expressionism, which is said to have reached him by letter from the Netherlands, up to and including the ghosts of Pieter Bruegel, Rembrandt, William Turner, Vincent van Gogh and James Ensor, who were believed to have taken hold of him. The absence of documentation means that these speculations cannot be verified.
Permeke in England, the Crucial Years — Jan Ceuleers
the poet and collector Paul Desmeth, a friend of Léon Spilliaert. The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium acquired it in 1927, thanks to an anonymous patron, the first acquisition by a museum of a work by Permeke. The figures are almost life-size. The image plane cuts through the room so that the viewer seems to become part of the pictorial space, but the figures do not invite the viewer to participate in the conversation piece. Their gaze is averted or hidden, like the figure in the doorway. The generally neutral effect with regard to the motif is indicative of Permeke’s attitude. It is not the inner lives of the characters that matter, only their exterior, their function in the composition. The title suggests dramatic action, but this cannot be deduced from either the figures’ expressions or their postures. The Pub might be a better title, given that it is a place where the public and the private intersect. The figure on the left with the tray is approaching to greet a new customer and take their order. The conversations between the pubgoers fall silent, but this silence is not equally distributed. Some figures are elaborated, others sketchy; some have even been reduced to smudges. Despite the warm colours, this work radiates a certain detachment, like the later figure compositions, because for the painter, the characters and their backdrop are simply a pretext for solving a painterly problem: how to depict a group of people in a small space so that they all come into their own? Thanks to the appearance of a stranger, the characters create a scene that is deserving of our attention, so we must go in search of a biographical or symbolic meaning.
The Butcher is a giant, almost caricatural figure who is tackling a rib with an oversized cleaver. The landscape is like a stage backdrop, and the two most important characters mirror one another in their strength. Except for a few concessions to the picturesque – details such as the butcher’s pipe, the saw, and the pig’s head – Permeke succeeds in arranging the figures in the plane effectively. A scene from country life, pertaining to humans’ dominance over nature, gives rise to a dominant style of painting.
The Cider Drinker intensifies this stylisation. The body is partly composed of geometric volumes, but its overall form is primarily determined by the S-shaped line, the graceful line par excellence that had steered painting in a more decorative direction via the rhythmic patterns of Art Nouveau. In Devon, agricultural labourers were partly paid in cider, but here – just like later – Permeke shows no trace of empathy or social engagement. The conflicts of his time are not reflected in his work. This is primarily a formal experiment in which the colours have been translated into an almost colourless range. The tonal value takes precedence. The refined effect is like a grisaille, the illusion of a sculpture. The semi-mechanical elements appear to be suspended in a shallow, relief-like space. Perhaps the difficulty here was finding a way to make monochrome work? With his preference for deep and heavy tones, Permeke would also later set himself markedly apart from the majority of his colleagues.
If the sequence of the three-figure pieces is correct, then one might conclude that the composition becomes more emphatic, that the figures want to step outside the space allocated to them. Just like the painter, we see them in close-up, but entirely devoid of intimacy. Their faces are as expressionless as in a daguerreotype. Permeke had no desire to evoke any kind of involvement from his characters. He did not want to report on country life, he was not looking for archetypes or a link to the cosmos. Everything revolved around his blossoming self-awareness as an artist. The quest for the monumental that would come to characterise his oeuvre was closely linked to his insatiable ambition.
After or alongside a series of conventional landscapes, mostly on paper, Permeke painted several versions in a darker tone with oil on canvas,
Constant Permeke’s reception in Brazil cannot be discussed without reference to his involvement in the São Paulo Biennials of 1951 and 1955. Seven of his artworks were exhibited at the inaugural edition of the exhibition, including About Permeke. Another painting, The Harvest, won an acquisition prize, financed by the Banco Nacional Imobiliário Acquisition Fund. Paintings granted acquisition prizes were incorporated into the collection of the recently created Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM-SP). Established in 1948, just a few years prior to the first Biennial, its aim was to assemble a comprehensive collection of modern art, broadly along the lines of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The museum’s artistic director, Lourival Gomes Machado, who also organised the first Biennial, wrote in the catalogue introduction 1 that this new exhibition was designed “to put Brazilian modern art in live contact with the art of the rest of the world, at the same time that São Paulo would seek to become a world artistic centre”. It is worth noting that Nelson Rockefeller donated the first artworks to the museum’s collection in the context of cultural diplomacy during the Cold War years.
In this first edition of the São Paulo Biennial, Permeke was presented to the Brazilian public as the most prominent living Belgian artist and the central figure of Flemish Expressionism. His work was displayed alongside pieces by other influential Belgian artists, such as Gaston Bertrand, Jean-Baptiste Brusselmans, Willem Paerels, Paul Delvaux and René Magritte. Out of all these illustrious names, Permeke was identified as being the leading representative of Belgian art and he was awarded the acquisition prize. Permeke’s centrality in Belgian art at the first Biennial can partly be explained by the fact that only living artists were exhibited in the show. According to the text introducing the Belgian delegation, names such as the recently deceased James Ensor were displayed in tribute exhibitions held in the United States. Permeke, born in 1886, was sixty-five years old at the time, but he was not the most senior of the Belgians shown at the Biennial. Willem Paerels and Jean-Baptiste Brusselmans were born in 1878 and 1884 respectively. Even Magritte, born in 1898 and internationally famous, was practically the same age as Permeke.
In addition to The Harvest, another painting by Permeke was acquired during the first Biennial. This was Seascape, which Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho purchased for his private collection. He subsequently donated it, along with other artworks, to the University of São Paulo. The introductory text to the delegation describes Permeke as “an audacious and sensitive artist, last survivor of the School of Sint-Martens-Latem and founder of Flemish Expressionism”. It also states that “only a few Belgian artists escaped Permeke’s influences”. The author was the Advisor for Artistic Propaganda at the Ministry of Public Education in Brussels, Émile Langui. It is worth mentioning that Brazil was undergoing radical changes in the 1950s. The economy was developing, and the country was thriving in a world devastated by the war. It was finally bearing the fruits of the industrialisation that had started in the 1930s with the new republic. Building museums and cultural institutions in this modernising country was a natural consequence of the developmental spirit of those years. The creation of the Museum of Art of São Paulo (MASP) in 1947, and MAM-SP
Daniël Rovers
hair at the back of the figure’s head appear to be fastened together in a plait, while the hair on the forehead is wide and high, like an iron helmet. Hence the reflection of an invisible light source.
That one eye also catches a great deal of light, although the almond shape itself remains dark. The emphasis is thus placed on the gaze, which is focused on another space and another time. This figure seems proud, exalted and helpless. A Greek statue that guards the temple, keeping away evil spirits and people with bad intentions, but which cannot see what is going on behind its back. An era that rushes onwards and cannot take account of who is living on earth.
Idiosyncratic, proud, exalted – but certainly not independent. She gazes at something that captures her attention, or in other words at something upon which she would like to focus, as soon as it appears on the horizon. Her fate depends on another. This could be a man who is away from home, of whom she is wondering whether he will come home that evening; and/or whether there will be enough bread on the table for the next few days. It could be about a threatening storm, causing houses to shrink and dissolve in smouldering piles of ash. She is also dependent upon the painter, who asks her to pose for another few minutes, her head turned away, so that he can get everything down properly on the canvas. Compare her to Permeke’s equally large (in terms of height) Boer met schop [Farmer with Spade] (1930), a charcoal drawing, which nevertheless narrowly fits onto the paper. The farmer stares out ahead of him. He is not wearing clogs, but is barefoot, like a sinner, with his feet pointing in different directions. He is broad, but not in a powerful, let alone mechanical, way. His hands rest upon the spade, causing him to bend forwards slightly, rather sadly, in the grip of forces that are beyond his control. There is nothing martial or virile about his big moustache, rather something sad, as if he has been drenched by the rain and is cold, the reason why he has tied his simple scarf like a noose. The charcoal is partly rubbed out and the farmer looks softer, more human than the peasant woman. The spade that the man holds is composed of nothing more than two erratic lines, like a large umbilical cord through which he forever remains attached to his creator. How could he ever stand on his own two feet, that is, emancipate himself?
The horizon is the end of the world, the limit where our vision ends. What goes on behind it is something you can only guess at, hope for, fear. Normally the horizon is depicted in a painting with a horizontal, imaginary line, the separation between two large colour planes. This creates a simple landscape, in which people are the passers-by. There is neither a horizon nor a landscape in this picture, so the female figure is left to her own devices. The absence of a background causes the large body to be the painting’s focal point. It is constrained within black contours and almost becomes a country in itself: generally flat with hills and valleys here and there. It is a sturdy ‘body-country’, which you cannot push over, pull along, or fool. You can stand on it, but it won’t budge.
This peasant woman is wearing clogs, here depicted heel to heel, to ensure that she will not run away to perform her duties. Inscribed on one clog, like a shoe size, is an eventful year from the past century. Time has stood still. She is motionless and, in this form, destined to a life of concentrated standing still.
Considering something in depth sets thinking in train. Although the opposite is often true: thinking comes upon us when we have been busily engaged with something for a time. The head temporarily separates from the rest of the body, forgets what it was supposed to be doing; before again remembering who it once was, what it once dreamt of and longed for. Above all, in the early morning, when
Alexis, Brussels, Belgium, Provinciaal Archief West-Vlaanderen (Provincial Archives of West Flanders), personal archive/Willy Van den Bussche/2022/P.B./188c (p. 171 bottom)
Alexis 15, Archief voor Hedendaagse Kunst in België−Archives de l’Art contemporain en Belgique (Archives of Contemporary Art in Belgium) 002688 (p. 173 bottom)
Alexis 18, Archief voor Hedendaagse Kunst in België−Archives de l’Art contemporain en Belgique 002693 (p. 172 bottom left)
Antony, Ostend (pp. 49 bottom, 156 top left, 156 bottom, 160, 161, 163 top, 164, 165, 172 bottom right, 177 top, 177 bottom)
Archief voor Hedendaagse Kunst in België−Archives de l’Art contemporain en Belgique 000764 (p. 19)
Archief voor Hedendaagse Kunst in België−Archives de l’Art contemporain en Belgique 000834 (p. 172 top left)
Archief voor Hedendaagse Kunst in België−Archives de l’Art contemporain en Belgique 000836 (p. 173 top)
Archief voor Hedendaagse Kunst in België−Archives de l’Art contemporain en Belgique 002676 (p. 64)
Archief voor Hedendaagse Kunst in België−Archives de l’Art contemporain en Belgique 002698 (p. 59)
Belgium, Provinciaal Archief West-Vlaanderen, personal archive/Willy Van den Bussche/2022/ P.B./181b (p. 166 bottom)
Belgium, Provinciaal Archief West-Vlaanderen, personal archive/Willy Van den Bussche/2022/ P.B./188c (p. 57 bottom)
Belgium, Provinciaal Archief West-Vlaanderen, personal archive/Willy Van den Bussche/2022/ P.B./198a (pp. 53, 57 top and bottom, 170 top, 171 top)
CIVA Collections, Brussels (pp. 166 top, 167 top, 167 bottom)
John Permeke Collection (p. 158)
Steven Decroos (pp. 4, 83, 85, 112, 116, 134–135, 142)
Dede, Brussels (pp. 172 top right, 174, 175 top left, 175 bottom, 176 bottom)
Fonds Victor Bourgeois, CIVA Collections, Brussels (p. 51 bottom)
Fonds Pierre Vandervoort, CIVA Collections, Brussels (pp. 50 top and bottom, 51 top)
GrandPalaisRmn (PBA Lille) /Jacques Quecq d’Henripret (p. 130)
Jacques Hersleven, CIVA Collections, Brussels (p. 49 top)
J. L. Lacroix (p. 95)
Hugo Maertens (pp. 41 bottom, 91)
Magenta (p. 159 bottom left)
Magenta – former collection Devos, Oudenaarde (pp. 157 top, 159 top left, 159 top right)
Provinciaal Archief West-Vlaanderen, Verhaeghe 2018/215c (p. 43)
Speltdoorn, Brussels (p. 170 bottom left)
Studio Babilon c 09/47 − Archief voor Hedendaagse Kunst in België−Archives de l’Art contemporain en Belgique 002007 (p. 171 top)
Giacomelli Venice (p. 20 bottom)
Cedric Verhelst (pp. 48, 66, 69, 72, 73, 74, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 86, 93, 94, 96, 98, 101, 104, 105, 107, 109, 111, 113, 115, 118, 119, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 127, 133, 136-137, 140, 141, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150 top, 151, 152, 153, 180)
Constant Permeke’s artworks are in the public domain.