Eugeen Van Mieghem
Eugeen Van Mieghem (born October 1, 1875 in Antwerp , † March 24, 1930 ibid) was a Belgian painter.
For several years now, Eugeen Van Mieghem's work has been rediscovered by a wide audience. A Steinlen exhibition in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona meant the final international recognition of the Antwerp port painter .
Van Mieghem was born on October 1st in the middle of Antwerp's port district. Already in his childhood he got to know the hard life on the Waterkant . His talent for drawing was already evident in elementary school. Around 1892 he saw paintings for the first time at the Antwerp Art Academy , among others by Vincent van Gogh , Seurat, Meunier and Toulouse-Lautrec . An idealism grew in Van Mieghem , to which he remained true throughout his life. He became the painter of the people in the harbor: the porters, the bag sewers, the emigrants , the boatmen and the homeless.
In 1901 Van Mieghem experienced his first success at the Brussels Salon of the artists' association La Libre Esthétique . His pastels and drawings hung there alongside works by French impressionists such as Claude Monet , Paul Cézanne , Camille Pissarro , Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Vuillard . In 1902 he married his childhood friend Augustin Pautre. In November 1904 his young wife fell ill. Van Mieghem immortalized them in poignant drawings and pastels that can be compared with similar works by Rembrandt or Ferdinand Hodler . After his wife's death a year later, Van Mieghem was so heartbroken that he stopped exhibiting until 1910.
After his solo exhibition in 1912 in the Antwerpse Koninklijk Kunstverbond , Van Mieghem was also noticed abroad. He took part in group exhibitions in Cologne and The Hague . In March 1919 he exhibited works that had been created during the First War in Antwerp . These remarkable creations - especially drawings and pastels - received a lot of recognition from art critics, who compared them with those of Steinlen, Forain and Käthe Kollwitz . After a laudatory article by his friend Willem Elsschot , Van Mieghem was also able to exhibit his war oeuvre in a gallery in Scheveningen , the Netherlands .
In 1920 he became a teacher at the Antwerp Art School in the life drawing class . Until his death in 1930 he took part in exhibitions regularly.
Work and influence
Like no other, Van Mieghem has succeeded in capturing the life and everyday life of simple dockworkers in visual form. In his rendering of the poor conditions in which they lived, he closely follows the strength and authenticity of Jean-François Millet . Just like this forerunner of socially committed art, Van Mieghem never had to leave his surroundings to find motifs for his paintings and drawings. The world was right on his doorstep.
Web links
- Literature by and about Eugeen Van Mieghem in the catalog of the German National Library
- Van Mieghem Museum
- Extensive biography
- Portrait in the TAZ
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Van Mieghem, Eugeen |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Belgian painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 1, 1875 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Antwerp |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 24, 1930 |
| Place of death | Antwerp |