1.
Laurent Delvaux
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Laurent Delvaux was a Flemish sculptor. After a successful career that brought him to London and Rome. Delvaux was a figure between the Baroque and Neo-classicism. Delvaux probably trained in his native Ghent under the local sculptor J. B. van Helderberghe, at the age of 18 he went to Brussels to study under Pierre-Denis Plumier from Antwerp and attended the local drawing academy. He went to London in 1717 where he collaborated with his compatriot Peter Scheemakers, when they were joined by Plumier in 1721 they worked together on a number of marble funerary monuments, including that of John Sheffield, duke of Buckingham. Scheemakers and Delvaux entered into a partnership and set up a workshop in Millbank, Westminster. Their workshop produced many sober classical monuments and garden statuary after the Antique, the partners sold their stock in the partnership and travelled to Rome in 1728. In Rome, Delvaux studied the work of compatriots Giambologna and François Duquesnoy as well as Italian sculpture of the 17th century and he keenly admired the sculpture of Classical antiquity and took the opportunity to copy newly discovered pieces. While in Rome, John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford, commissioned a number of inspired by antique examples, most notably Biblis. Upon his return to the Austrian Netherlands in 1733, he became a court sculptor and he also received many religious commissions including the oak group of the Conversion of St Paul dated 1736. The same church also holds a series of oak statues of the Apostles sculpted by Delvaux in 1743–4, the pulpit in the Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent was made by him after a design by Hendrik Frans Verbrugghen. He also made a funerary monument for the Van der Noot family in 1746– for the Carmelite Church in Brussels. For the palace in Brussels, which survives partially, he created reliefs for the façade. Delvaux also worked for other European courts such as that of Portugal and for major abbeys like those at Afflighem, Floreffe, in 1734 he settled in Nivelles. In addition to work, Delvaux created many excellent models in terracotta. Many Belgian churches and museums in Brussels and Ghent hold works by him, among Delvauxs students were the sculptors Gilles-Lambert Godecharle, Pierre-François Le Roy, Laurent Joseph Tamine, Adrien-Joseph Anrion and Joseph Wilton. Delvauxs grandson Édouard Delvaux was a painter and a student of Henri Van Assche. Alain Jacobs, Laurent Delvaux, Gand,1696 - Nivelles,1778, Paris, Athena,1999 M. E. Tralbaut / Twee onbekende beeldhouwwerken van Laurent Delvaux - In, Brabantia 7, nr
2.
Delvaux (company)
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Delvaux is a Belgian manufacturer of fine leather luxury goods founded in 1829 by Charles Delvaux. The company claims to be the oldest fine leather luxury goods house in the world, in 1829, a year before Belgium declared its independence, Charles Delvaux opened a travel goods workshop and store in Brussels, Belgium. Delvaux is a warrant holder to the Court of Belgium, the house went into a gradual decline at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1933 an agricultural engineer with no experience in leather goods, Franz Schwennicke, took over the company from Edmond Delvaux, the last of the Delvaux family line. While keeping the manufacturing of goods, he progressively introduced a new concept for the time. For the 1958 Brussels World Fair, Delvaux introduced the Le Brillant handbag, the range-topping Le Brillant, still produced today, marked the first time the brand would create a product displaying the brand logo, in this case a buckle in the shape of a D letter. When Franz Schwennicke died in 1970, his wife Solange succeeded him, focusing on strengthening the creativity and expanding internationally. A light holdall model, the Le Pin was introduced to meet the needs of the new generation of women who were looking for larger handbags to carry their accessories. In 1988, a second opened to meet rising demand. At the end of the 80s, François Schwennicke, the eldest son of Franz and Solange, in 1994, the headquarters were moved back to Brussels, this time to the former arsenal of the Belgian Army on Boulevard Louis Schmidt. LArsenal was designed by Henri van Dievoet, a Belgian architect strongly inspired by Art Nouveau, in 2011, the investment arm of the Fung Group, First Heritage Brands, took a majority stake in the company with the ambition to further grow it internationally. Two years later, new point-of sales started to open in France, Japan, Korea, Delvaux creates two collections per year, Spring-Summer and Autumn-Winter. Each collection sees the introduction of new materials and new colors for a time while the design of the bags remains unchanged from one collection to another. The current major lines of womens bags, Le Brillant, Le Tempête, Le Madame, Le Simplissime, Le Givry, Le Pin, in 2014, a line of mens bags was added. Delvaux also creates small leather goods, custom jewellery and scarves, since 1938, each new model is entered into a Gold Book alongside its detailed description and the name of its designer. Delvaux operates about 10 boutiques in Belgium with its flagship boutique being at Galerie de la Reine in Brussels, in 2014, Delvaux opened its first international flagship boutiques in Paris, Tokyo and London
3.
Brussels
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Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, is a region of Belgium comprising 19 municipalities, including the City of Brussels which is the capital of Belgium. The Brussels-Capital Region is a part of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community, but is separate from the region of Flanders or Wallonia. The region has a population of 1.2 million and an area with a population of over 1.8 million. Brussels is the de facto capital of the European Union as it hosts a number of principal EU institutions, the secretariat of the Benelux and the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are also located in Brussels. Today, it is considered an Alpha global city, historically a Dutch-speaking city, Brussels has seen a language shift to French from the late 19th century onwards. Today, the majority language is French, and the Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. All road signs, street names, and many advertisements and services are shown in both languages, Brussels is increasingly becoming multilingual with increasing numbers of migrants, expatriates and minority groups speaking their own languages. The most common theory of the origin of Brussels name is that it derives from the Old Dutch Broekzele or Broeksel, meaning marsh, Saint Vindicianus, the bishop of Cambrai made the first recorded reference to the place Brosella in 695 when it was still a hamlet. The origin of the settlement that was to become Brussels lies in Saint Gaugericus construction of a chapel on an island in the river Senne around 580. The official founding of Brussels is usually situated around 979, when Duke Charles of Lower Lotharingia transferred the relics of Saint Gudula from Moorsel to the Saint Gaugericus chapel, Charles would construct the first permanent fortification in the city, doing so on that same island. Lambert I of Leuven, Count of Leuven gained the County of Brussels around 1000 by marrying Charles daughter, as it grew to a population of around 30,000, the surrounding marshes were drained to allow for further expansion. The Counts of Leuven became Dukes of Brabant at about this time, in the 13th century, the city got its first walls. After the construction of the city walls in the early 13th century, to let the city expand, a second set of walls was erected between 1356 and 1383. Today, traces of it can still be seen, mostly because the small ring, Brabant had lost its independence, but Brussels became the Princely Capital of the prosperous Low Countries, and flourished. In 1516 Charles V, who had been heir of the Low Countries since 1506, was declared King of Spain in St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral in Brussels. Upon the death of his grandfather, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor in 1519 and it was in the Palace complex at Coudenberg that Charles V abdicated in 1555. This impressive palace, famous all over Europe, had expanded since it had first become the seat of the Dukes of Brabant. In 1695, during the Nine Years War, King Louis XIV of France sent troops to bombard Brussels with artillery, together with the resulting fire, it was the most destructive event in the entire history of Brussels
4.
Veurne
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Veurne is a city and municipality in the Belgian province of West Flanders. The municipality comprises the town of Veurne proper and the settlements of Avekapelle, Booitshoeke, Bulskamp, De Moeren, Eggewaartskapelle, Houtem, Steenkerke, Vinkem, Wulveringem, and Zoutenaaie. Veurne, in Latin Furna, is first found in 877 as a possession of the Saint Bertin Abbey in Saint-Omer, around 890 AD, it was noted as a fortification against the Viking raids. It soon was placed at the head of the castellany of Veurne, Veurne became a city in the 12th century. During the following century, trade with England flourished, in 1270, however, the relations with England came to a standstill and the city’s economy went into a long decline, hence the nickname of the Veurne Sleepers. On August 20,1297, the Battle of Veurne was fought in the struggle between the Flemish cities and the French king. The beautiful gothic church of Saint Walburga and the tower of the church of Saint Nicolas, Saint Walburga housed a chapter of canons. Saint Nicholas and Saint Denis were the two parish churches and possessions of the Norbertine abbey of Saint Nicholas. The 15th century saw the construction of a new city hall, as most of the Westhoek, the city and the neighbourghood strongly recessed during the economic and religious problems around 1566–1583. But when the town and the castellany officially got together, the town flourished, most of the other historic buildings date from this time, the prosperous reign of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella around 1600. In 1644 the Capucines organised a procession, since 1646, this procession was organised by the Sodales, a religious confraternity, that organised a crossway during Advent time, under the leadership of the Norbertine monk Jacob Clou. The hooded Sodales took a cross for penitence and this procession was expanded at the end of the 17th century with scenes from the Bible, and is the only one of his kind, remaining up to now in Flanders. The second half of the 17th century was marked by the miseries brought to the region by Louis XIV’s wars, vauban built heavy fortifications around the city, the outlines of which are still noticeable from the air today. Joseph II of Austria put them down and closed some of the institutions, putting a temporary end to the penitents’ procession. Those few cloisters that were still operating were closed at the French Revolution, from the Battle of Waterloo until World War I, Veurne could enjoy a century of quiet and prosperity. In 1831, Veurne was the first city to welcome Belgium’s new king, Leopold I, during World War I, Veurne was located within the Yser pocket of Belgian resistance against the German troops. During the Battle of the Yser, the Veurne city hall became the headquarters for the Belgian troops under King Albert I, in 1920, the French President, Raymond Poincaré, came to Veurne to award the city the Croix de guerre with palm. Veurne suffered some damage during World War II, mainly from allied bombing, today, the city is a regional centre, which gives commercial, medical, and educational services to the surrounding communities while enjoying increasing tourist attention
5.
Belgium
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Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres and has a population of about 11 million people. Additionally, there is a group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons located around the High Fens area. Historically, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were known as the Low Countries, the region was called Belgica in Latin, after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, today, Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. It is divided into three regions and three communities, that exist next to each other and its two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia, Belgiums linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Upon its independence, declared in 1830, Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Belgium is also a member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD and WTO. Its capital, Brussels, hosts several of the EUs official seats as well as the headquarters of major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium is also a part of the Schengen Area, Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy and is categorized as very high in the Human Development Index. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings, a gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Eighty Years War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands. The latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and this was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. The reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 and for women in 1949. The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party, French was originally the single official language adopted by the nobility and the bourgeoisie
6.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
7.
Giorgio de Chirico
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Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian artist and writer. In the years before World War I, he founded the scuola metafisica art movement, after 1919, he became interested in traditional painting techniques, and worked in a neoclassical or neo-Baroque style, while frequently revisiting the metaphysical themes of his earlier work. De Chirico was born in Volos, Greece, to a Genoan mother and he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he studied under Max Klinger and read the writings of the philosophers Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer and Otto Weininger. There, he studied the works of Arnold Böcklin. He returned to Italy in the summer of 1909 and spent six months in Milan and he also painted The Enigma of the Oracle while in Florence. In July 1911 he spent a few days in Turin on his way to Paris, De Chirico was profoundly moved by what he called the metaphysical aspect of Turin, especially the architecture of its archways and piazzas. De Chirico moved to Paris in July 1911, where he joined his brother Andrea. Through his brother he met Pierre Laprade, a member of the jury at the Salon dAutomne, where he exhibited three of his works, Enigma of the Oracle, Enigma of an Afternoon and Self-Portrait. During 1913 he exhibited paintings at the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d’Automne, his work was noticed by Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, in 1914, through Apollinaire, he met the art dealer Paul Guillaume, with whom he signed a contract for his artistic output. At the outbreak of World War I, he returned to Italy, upon his arrival in May 1915, he enlisted in the army, but he was considered unfit for work and assigned to the hospital at Ferrara. Here he met with Carlo Carrà and together founded the pittura metafisica movement. He continued to paint, and in 1918, he transferred to Rome, starting from 1918, his work was exhibited extensively in Europe. De Chirico is best known for the paintings he produced between 1909 and 1919, his period, which are characterized by haunted, brooding moods evoked by their images. In autumn,1919, De Chirico published an article in Valori Plastici entitled The Return of Craftsmanship, in which he advocated a return to traditional methods and iconography. In the early 1920s, the Surrealist writer André Breton discovered one of De Chiricos metaphysical paintings on display in Guillaumes Paris gallery, numerous young artists who were similarly affected by De Chiricos imagery became the core of the Paris Surrealist group centered around Breton. In 1924 De Chirico visited Paris and was accepted into the group, De Chirico met and married his first wife, the Russian ballerina Raissa Gurievich in 1925, and together they moved to Paris. His relationship with the Surrealists grew increasingly contentious, as they publicly disparaged his new work, by 1926 he had come to them as cretinous. They soon parted ways in acrimony, in 1928 he held his first exhibition in New York City and shortly afterwards, London
8.
Surrealism
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Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. The aim was to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream, leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I, the word surrealist was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire and first appeared in the preface to his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which was written in 1903 and first performed in 1917. The Dadaists protested with anti-art gatherings, performances, writings and art works, after the war, when they returned to Paris, the Dada activities continued. Meeting the young writer Jacques Vaché, Breton felt that Vaché was the son of writer. He admired the young writers anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition, later Breton wrote, In literature, I was successively taken with Rimbaud, with Jarry, with Apollinaire, with Nouveau, with Lautréamont, but it is Jacques Vaché to whom I owe the most. Back in Paris, Breton joined in Dada activities and started the literary journal Littérature along with Louis Aragon and they began experimenting with automatic writing—spontaneously writing without censoring their thoughts—and published the writings, as well as accounts of dreams, in the magazine. Breton and Soupault delved deeper into automatism and wrote The Magnetic Fields, continuing to write, they came to believe that automatism was a better tactic for societal change than the Dada form of attack on prevailing values. They also looked to the Marxist dialectic and the work of such theorists as Walter Benjamin, freuds work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. They embraced idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness, as Salvador Dalí later proclaimed, There is only one difference between a madman and me. Beside the use of analysis, they emphasized that one could combine inside the same frame, elements not normally found together to produce illogical. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be−the greater its emotional power, the group aimed to revolutionize human experience, in its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects. They wanted to people from false rationality, and restrictive customs. Breton proclaimed that the aim of Surrealism was long live the social revolution. To this goal, at various times Surrealists aligned with communism and anarchism, in 1924 two Surrealist factions declared their philosophy in two separate Surrealist Manifestos. That same year the Bureau of Surrealist Research was established, leading up to 1924, two rival surrealist groups had formed. Each group claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Guillaume Apollinaire, the other group, led by Breton, included Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard, Jacques Baron, Jacques-André Boiffard, Jean Carrive, René Crevel and Georges Malkine, among others. Goll and Breton clashed openly, at one point literally fighting, at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, in the end, Breton won the battle through tactical and numerical superiority
