From 21 May to 11 September 2016

The Museum of Fine Arts is anxious to promote top-quality artists with links to the region, so this summer it has chosen to spotlight artist Rémy Van den Abeele, who was born in Dampremy in 1918 and died in 2006. This show commemorates the tenth anniversary of his death.

I came to painting standing up, head-on, on tiptoes. And I will leave standing up, on my back, on tiptoes. RVDA

A selective presentation of thirty or so pieces will be staged at the Museum. Mainly based on loans from the artist’s family and from the Famenne Museum (Marche-en-Famenne is shortly to open a museum devoted to the work of Rémy Van den Abeele), and on the pieces held by the Museum of Fine Arts itself, this presentation will offer the public the opportunity to rediscover a remarkably talented and technically accomplished artist who occupied a singular place in the artistic life of Belgium from the 1950s to the dawn of the 21st century.

Rémy Van den Abeele is an artist who was little known to the public at large, a discreet figure who operated on the fringes of the official circles. He presents a ‘surrealising’ world which is both hyperrealistic and tinged with spirituality. As it traces the various ‘periods’ into which his work can be divided (blue, brown, white, etc.), the Museum presents a career in dotted lines, certainly elliptical but unquestionably evocative of an artistic life genuinely fulfilled and a fully realised creative approach. Between their unquestioned love of the material and an irrepressible anguish for Man and his future, between an acute sense of theatricality and spiritual quest, the works of Rémy Van den Abeele lead to the discovery of a world which is ‘dreamed’ and yet directly engaged with our age.

This homage has been organised with the valued contribution of Chantal, Claudine and Jean-Pol Van den Abeele, the artist’s children, Alexandre Van den Abeele, his grandson, private lenders, the Famenne Museum, the Town of Marche-en-Famenne, the Town of Soignies and the Cultural Services of the Province of Hainaut.

With the support of the non-profit association Friends of the Museums of the City of Charleroi

A LOOK AT THE COLLECTIONS: RENÉ MAGRITTE (Lessines, 1898 – Schaerbeek, 1967)

As from the spring of 2016, the Museum of Fine Arts, which currently holds 8 works by René Magritte, will benefit from an exceptional deposit from the non-profit association Domaine régional Solvay – Château de La Hulpe. On 21 May next, ‘L’empire de la réflexion’, currently held by the Walloon Government, will complete a very handsome ensemble on display for the public at the very heart of the Museum’s galleries devoted to the Permanent Collections. Dating back to 1938, this painting will be instrumental in the increasingly precise evocation of the artist’s output between the end of the First World War and the end of the fifties. To mark this new deposit, the Museum’s Educational and Cultural Service is publishing a booklet by Julie Waseige, Researcher attached to the Brussels Royal Museums of Fine Arts, together with a discovery leaflet for families.