Page 49 - Studio International - July 1966
P. 49
totems endowed with magic power, expressing what he
saw beyond the visible.
`I do not want any ready-made technique, a way of
fabrication which one can apply instinctively to any
work,' he once said. 'Only what one invents at the
moment when it is needed is valid. To force oneself to
learn a manner, to follow in the path of what has been
done and not what one wants to do is to expose oneself
to the danger of doing something which does not exactly
fit the work one is concerned with.' Looking at his
pictures (not all are masterpieces, but all are honest) one
realizes the drama of everyday happenings. The potato
eaters, The daily bread, The cutter of bread are revelations of
necessities; The visit of the stranger a revelation of desperate
homelessness; Farewell—of death; Great sea—of the ele-
mental storm and its following calm; The luminous clouds—
of the lyrical credo of nature. Permeke felt enormous
barbaric powers within him. He wanted to make 'gigantic
sculptures visible to the roving aeroplanes'. But he also
had both feet firmly planted on the ground.
Permeke's development was straightforward and direct.
Before 1914, when he was at Laethem, he painted in an
Impressionistic manner, slowly but deliberately moving
towards the Expressionism of van Gogh, Munch,
Rouault, Soutine, Kokoschka and, to some extent, of the
work of Die Brücke. During the first world war he was
gravely wounded and convalesced in England (at Chard-
stock in Devon, and at Sidmouth and Sidford). The
paintings of this period are perturbed, mostly sombre,
Above Below and only occasionally disrupted by explosions of strong
40 Marine au Brise-Lames c.1924 Moonlight landscape 1928
Oil, canvas, panel 21 1/4 x 25 in. Oil on canvas colour.
Colour block courtesy of Crane Kalman Gallery 19+ x 27 in. Between 1918 and 1925 he lived in Ostend—the most
important period of his creative artistic life, when he had
already adopted Expressionism and drew on the sea and
the life of fishermen for his motifs. The following five
years he spent in Jabbeke, where he built a home (now
a museum) and several studios. The motifs of this period
came predominantly from peasant life, and his style,
established as it then was, suffered few experimental in-
trusions. His work up to 1940 was somewhat uneven, as
if his artistic will was not always matched by his inner
vibrations, but his sculptural work, stylistically some-
where between Maillol and Zadkine, seems to have
become a creative necessity during the second world
war, which he spent at Jabbeke.
Permeke was born in Antwerp on July 31, 1886. He died
at Ostend on January 4, 1952. He travelled little. Once
he visited Switzerland. A few years after the second world
war he visited Brittany, and the landscapes he did there
reveal a new linear refinement combined with simplified
colour. They promised great things. But shortly there-
after he died.
He was a powerful draughtsman. His colours were
mostly subdued, earthen colours. Only rarely did Fauvist
accents appear. At times both the colour and the linear
elements were balanced in his paintings, but more fre-
quently it was colour which dominated, and his colour
had always the quality of exploding form. His message is
always clear, unmistakable and human, and his true
greatness has yet to be appreciated.
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