Gustave De Smet

Gustave Franciscus De Smet, also known as Gustaaf De Smet and Gust De Smet (21 January 1877 – 8 October 1943) was a Belgian painter and printmaker. Together with Constant Permeke and Frits Van den Berghe, he was one of the founders of Flemish Expressionism. Some of the works of the Flemish expressionists bear a stylistic relationship to German expressionism through their use of distorted forms, coloration and dynamic compositions while others show cubist elements in their sense of balance, synthesis and construction. Before World War I, these artists were part of the second group of the Latem School, a loose group of artists working at various times in the rural Lys river area around Sint-Martens-Latem, south of Ghent. They aimed to innovate Belgian art by turning away from bourgeois art and drawing inspiration from nature or the live of workers and farmers. Key members of the group fled Belgium at the start of World War I to countries where they were exposed to the latest Modernist art trends. De Smet fled to the Netherlands, where his development of an expressionist idiom was influenced by the Bergen School, the first expressionist art movement in the Netherlands, as well as the German expressionists. According to his own statement, De Smet only attended the Academy for a short time as he preferred to work in nature without a teacher. Both Gustave and his four years younger brother assisted their father with the decoration of inns, stores and fairground buildings.

He married Augusta van Hoorebeke, a cotton worker, on 19 February 1898. He paid for his wedding banquet at Estaminet Nenuphar by making large paintings for its interior decoration (still in situ). The couple's only child Firmin died on 13 September 1918 at the age of 20 as one of the 41 victims of the infamous train disaster near Weesp in the Netherlands, the country to which they had fled during the First World War. Around 1906, he became friends with Frits Van den Berghe and Constant Permeke in the Ghent working class district of Patershol. These friendships lasted for the rest of his life. In early 1906 he worked with Permeke in the harbour area of Ostend. The works of the Bergen School are characterised by figurative depiction with cubist influences, an expressionist touch and a saturated palette. De Smet later stated that through his encounter of the work of some modern artists, he saw that 'the visual imitation of nature stands in terrific opposition to pure expression. During this time he was further influenced by German expressionism which encouraged him to focus on personal feelings and new expressive ways of depicting them by using chiaroscuro effects and simplified lines and shapes. His work started to place greater emphasis on a well-organized and balanced structure which augmented the expressive quality of his art. His color palette changed to warm autumnal tones and blacks applied in broad brushstrokes leading to solid masses of paint on the canvas.

Selected paintings

Public collections Among the public collections holding works by Gustave De Smet are:

Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium The Hague, Kunstmuseum Den Haag Deinze, Museum van Deinze en de Leiestreek Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum Ghent, Museum of Fine Arts Ostend, Mu.ZEE Venlo, Museum van Bommel van Dam Zwolle, Museum De Fundatie