Bozar presents the first major retrospective in 45 years dedicated to Jean Brusselmans
Jean Brusselmans, Woman with Cat, 1947, watercolour on paper, private collection © photo: Bozar / Yves Gervais 2026.
BRUSSELS.—
Bozar presents the first retrospective exhibition dedicated to Jean Brusselmans (Brussels, 1884 – Dilbeek, 1953) since 1980. Featuring 120 paintings, drawings and engravings – including masterpieces from major museum collections as well as little known gems – Bozar celebrates one of the most distinctive painters of the Belgian avant-garde.
From the beginning of the 20th century, Brusselmans developed a unique oeuvre, unbound by artistic trends yet firmly rooted in the tradition of painting. Through 120 works and dialogues with his contemporaries – such as Léger, Mondrian, Morandi, Wouters and Permeke -, the exhibition delves into the world of this singular painter, between abstraction and figuration.
Light for all things
Brusselmans’s view of the world was as modest as it was profound. He painted simple elements from his immediate surroundings and imbued them with a monumental presence. “Art lies in casting light on all things, even the most thankless and the poorest.” he said. For him, there was no hierarchy amongst subjects. This conviction went hand in hand with a social awareness: “I had long realised that there was a need for strong and popular art.”
A journey in twelve chapters
The exhibition takes 1914 as its starting point, the year in which the artist settled in Auderghem and turned his back once and for all on academicism and realism.
Through a thematic and chronological approach, divided into twelve chapters, Painter by Nature traces his evolution up to the early 1950s: the journey of an artist who relentlessly sought the essence of things and strove to organise chaotic reality into clear and reasoned compositions.
This is how Brusselmans’s unique pictorial language developed, taking on its characteristic form from the 1930s onwards, oscillating between figuration and abstraction, tradition and modernity, reality and imagination, serenity and dramatic intensity.
Dialogues with his contemporaries
Additionally, some striking dialogues with (inter)national contemporaries – such as Fernand Léger, Piet Mondriaan, Giorgio Morandi, Rik Wouters, Victor Servranckx or Constant Permeke – shed light on Brusselmans within the context of his era.
These dialogues reveal sources of inspiration and artistic affinities while, above all, highlighting his distinctive position: one that can only be described as radically autonomous.
Kristof Santy: a contemporary view
Jean Brusselmans’ work continues to inspire younger generations of painters today. Kristof Santy (born in Roeselare, 1987) is one of them. For this exhibition, Bozar invited Santy to undertake a special commission that brings him into direct dialogue with the master’s lost works: the four monumental sets that Brusselmans painted in 1936 for the performance of Schönberg’s opera Erwartung at the Centre for Fine Arts of Brussels. These seven-metre-long panels have not survived. Drawing on the few available archival documents, Santy has recreated the sets for the first and final acts, using a technique new to him: pastel on unprepared linen canvas. The result is entirely personal, whilst remaining faithful to the master’s pictorial language. “I made it with my own hands, but the thinking behind it is shared with Jean Brusselmans”, explains Santy.
A singular approach
Brusselmans’ work spans almost the entire first half of the 20th century, a period during which European art shifted from the realism and academicism of the 19th century to a host of new movements, ranging from Luminism and Brabant Fauvism to Flemish Expressionism, Surrealism and Constructivism.
Brusselmans was generally described as a Flemish expressionist, a label with which he himself strongly disagreed. Despite belonging to various artistic circles, such as L’Effort, the Brabant Fauvists, La Libre Esthétique, L’Art vivant, Les Compagnons de l’Art and Kunst van Heden, he remained an individualist.
He translated his personal world and his very way of being into an authentic pictorial universe, where, in his own words, “not a single brushstroke is too many or too few.” Brusselmans sought to paint “naively, purely and powerfully, to be natural.”
Back at Bozar
With this exhibition, Brusselmans returns to the Centre for Fine Arts Brussels, where he had held his first major solo exhibition in 1931. His connection with the institution was close and multifaceted: he was a founding member of the artists’ group L’Art vivant, which had its premises there, and created monumental theatre sets for the operas staged there, such as Schönberg’s Erwartung (1936) and Vondel’s Lucifer (1937). During his lifetime, the Centre for Fine Arts was a major promoter of his work, hosting three major exhibitions in the 1930s and a fourth in 1952. Posthumously, the Centre for Fine Arts dedicated a further exhibition to him in 1979.
