Still life with Cineraria, 1922

During the 1920s, Gustave Van de Woestyne incorporated the influences of cubism and expressionism into a personal compromise. The artist's writing is defined by a distinct sense of synthesis in which forms are greatly simplified and deformation is not shunned. This makes his work from the postwar period akin to Neorealism. However, his work retains a meditative character, full of symbolism and wonder, and even betrays surrealist intentions around 1930. In the paintings shown here, van de Woestyne brought together elements of everyday bourgeois existence. As a technique, he uses gouache, which was particularly popular in 1920s modernism.