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Lot Essay
De aanbidder van de acrobate (L’adorateur de l’acrobate) is one of the finest of a highly important series of paintings made by Gustave de Smet in the mid-1920s, which established him – alongside fellow ‘Lathem Saint-Martin group’ painters Constant Permeke and Frits van den Berghe – as one of the leading pioneers of Flemish Expressionism. Executed in 1924, De aanbidder van de acrobate is one of a progressive sequence of powerfully constructed images depicting the strong emotional bond between a man and a woman, in which de Smet combined raw and even naive forms of expression with a highly personalised form of Cubism in order to ‘give expression’ to what he called ‘the inner life [using only] the greatest possible simplicity of form and colour’ (quoted in P. Boyens, Gust. De Smet Retrospective, exh. cat., Proviciaal Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Ostend, 1989, p. 31).
Painted on the artist’s return to Belgium after several years spent in exile in Holland following the outbreak of the First World War, De aanbidder van de acrobate draws on a variety of different influences, including folk art, the Cubism of de Smet’s Parisian friends Henri le Fauconnier and Fernand Léger, and the work of German Expressionist painters such as Franz Marc, August Macke, Karl Schmidt Rottluff and Heinrich Campendonk, several of whom he had encountered during the War years. Upon his return to his beloved River Lys region of Flanders around 1923, de Smet adopted the distinctive colouring of Pieter Bruegel’s work, combining simple forms of folk art and a highly personalised and idiosyncratic style of Cubism to develop an earthy and distinctive brand of Expressionism that was all his own.
De aanbidder van de acrobate appears to depict a romantic encounter between two powerfully vertical standing figures each displayed prominently facing one another – one a suited gentleman, the other a female acrobat dressed in a pink leotard. Forming an Adam-and-Eve-like pairing, their encounter is observed by a trapeze artist situated at the centre of the picture and seen swinging in a nearby window that has been adorned with thick, theatrical curtains over a seemingly decorative painted bouquet. These elements bestow a certain degree of mystery upon the work and transform it into one that invokes a sense of the passage of human life, which Max Beckmann famously described as a ‘Weltheater’ or world-theatre.
De aanbidder van de acrobatee is one of a series of circus-themed paintings that De Smet made at this time and is also the culmination of a sequence of compositions, beginning with Le peintre et sa femme of 1924, now in the Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels, and followed by Le bouquet of the same year, in which the artist explored the intimacy of the relationship between man and woman as a kind of pictorial theatre. Piet Boyens has written of De aanbidder van de acrobate: ‘In an enclosed space with festive decor, a man and woman face each other, somewhat embarrassed. The room vibrates in the harsh glare of the lamps, the harsh light penetrating every corner. The ochre parquet floor is animated by the couple’s shadows. Touching in his awkwardness, the young man offers a floral tribute to the acrobat dressed in a striking pink. The painter leaves it to the viewer to guess the reason for the visit. Was it a budding romance or his profound admiration for the trapeze artist that has helped the man overcome his shyness and brought him closer to the young woman’ (Gust. De Smet. Chronique et analyse de l'oeuvre, Antwerp, 1989, p. 182).
The mystery of De aanbidder van de acrobate that Boyens emphasizes is one founded upon love. For the critic Emile Langui, it was this same simple and direct approach to the expression of love that underpinned all of de Smet’s work. ‘… one easily discovers that the fundamental driving force of Gust de Smet’s art is nothing less than love. He does not observe things, he loves them. There is something resolutely Franciscan in his attachment to all objects of creation and in the first place to all in nature and man which is humble, defenceless and free of all artifice… at the bottom of all this love there was a large dose of sensuality, a warm, timid sensuality which gives a rare charm to an art so perfectly balanced between voluptuousness and contemplation. Inevitably one is reminded of the words of Lauréamont: “No one knows the quantity of love which my aspirations towards beauty contain”’ (Expressionism in Belgium, Brussels, 1971, p. 54).
Painted on the artist’s return to Belgium after several years spent in exile in Holland following the outbreak of the First World War, De aanbidder van de acrobate draws on a variety of different influences, including folk art, the Cubism of de Smet’s Parisian friends Henri le Fauconnier and Fernand Léger, and the work of German Expressionist painters such as Franz Marc, August Macke, Karl Schmidt Rottluff and Heinrich Campendonk, several of whom he had encountered during the War years. Upon his return to his beloved River Lys region of Flanders around 1923, de Smet adopted the distinctive colouring of Pieter Bruegel’s work, combining simple forms of folk art and a highly personalised and idiosyncratic style of Cubism to develop an earthy and distinctive brand of Expressionism that was all his own.
De aanbidder van de acrobate appears to depict a romantic encounter between two powerfully vertical standing figures each displayed prominently facing one another – one a suited gentleman, the other a female acrobat dressed in a pink leotard. Forming an Adam-and-Eve-like pairing, their encounter is observed by a trapeze artist situated at the centre of the picture and seen swinging in a nearby window that has been adorned with thick, theatrical curtains over a seemingly decorative painted bouquet. These elements bestow a certain degree of mystery upon the work and transform it into one that invokes a sense of the passage of human life, which Max Beckmann famously described as a ‘Weltheater’ or world-theatre.
De aanbidder van de acrobatee is one of a series of circus-themed paintings that De Smet made at this time and is also the culmination of a sequence of compositions, beginning with Le peintre et sa femme of 1924, now in the Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels, and followed by Le bouquet of the same year, in which the artist explored the intimacy of the relationship between man and woman as a kind of pictorial theatre. Piet Boyens has written of De aanbidder van de acrobate: ‘In an enclosed space with festive decor, a man and woman face each other, somewhat embarrassed. The room vibrates in the harsh glare of the lamps, the harsh light penetrating every corner. The ochre parquet floor is animated by the couple’s shadows. Touching in his awkwardness, the young man offers a floral tribute to the acrobat dressed in a striking pink. The painter leaves it to the viewer to guess the reason for the visit. Was it a budding romance or his profound admiration for the trapeze artist that has helped the man overcome his shyness and brought him closer to the young woman’ (Gust. De Smet. Chronique et analyse de l'oeuvre, Antwerp, 1989, p. 182).
The mystery of De aanbidder van de acrobate that Boyens emphasizes is one founded upon love. For the critic Emile Langui, it was this same simple and direct approach to the expression of love that underpinned all of de Smet’s work. ‘… one easily discovers that the fundamental driving force of Gust de Smet’s art is nothing less than love. He does not observe things, he loves them. There is something resolutely Franciscan in his attachment to all objects of creation and in the first place to all in nature and man which is humble, defenceless and free of all artifice… at the bottom of all this love there was a large dose of sensuality, a warm, timid sensuality which gives a rare charm to an art so perfectly balanced between voluptuousness and contemplation. Inevitably one is reminded of the words of Lauréamont: “No one knows the quantity of love which my aspirations towards beauty contain”’ (Expressionism in Belgium, Brussels, 1971, p. 54).