Self-Portrait, ca. 1919

During the First World War, Frits Van den Berghe stayed in the Netherlands, together with the brothers Gustave and Leon De Smet. There he developed an expressionist style which he would later abandon for surrealist works. In 1917-1918, he returned to Belgium for a post at the Flemish Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences in Brussels. This attitude during the German occupation cost him dearly, because after the armistice he had to flee the country again and the Ghent city council deprived him of his appointment as a teacher at the academy. After the war, he returned to the Netherlands among a group of exiled activists, including the poet René De Clercq and the sculptor Jozef Cantré. This self-portrait from 1919 is a preliminary study for the great work The Exiles. Around the central figure of De Clercq, the artist groups a number of friends, including Cantré, Victor De Knop and himself.