Frans Claerhout and Constant Permeke in Conversation
Frans Claerhout and Constant Permeke never shared a generation. Permeke entered the world in Antwerp in 1886, and his family moved him to Ostend at six years old. He trained at the Bruges Academy of Fine Arts, joined Frits Van den Berghe and Gustave and Léon De Smet at the Sint-Martens-Latem artists' colony between 1909 and 1912, and eventually settled permanently in the village of Jabbeke around 1928. He died in 1952. Claerhout entered the world in Pittem, West Flanders, in 1919, moved to South Africa in 1946, and spent most of his adult life there. He died in Bloemfontein in 2006. Despite the gap between their careers, a direct artistic connection links them. Claerhout knew Permeke's work primarily through books, and the two men met in person at least once. That contact ran deep enough that Claerhout counted Permeke among the artists who shaped his visual language most. The comparison, then, rests on more than resemblance. Permeke helped Claerhout find a way of painting. Bu...
