Acad\u00e9mie Royale des Beaux-Arts alumni

Victor_Servranckx

Victor Servranckx (26 June 1897 – 11 December 1965) was a Belgian abstract painter and designer.
Servranckx was born in Diegem (Machelen) and studied from 1913 to 1917 at the Brussels Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. There, in 1916, he met René Magritte, with whom he wrote "Pure Art: A Defence of the Aesthetic" in 1922. Servranckx's style was influenced by cubism, constructivism, and surrealism. He died in Vilvoorde.

Anto_Carte

Antoine "Anto" Carte (8 December 1886 - 15 February 1954) was a Belgian painter.
Antoine Carto was born in Mons in 1886. His father was a joiner. Anto Carte was first apprenticed to François Depooter, an interior painter, and then studied art at the academies of Mons and Brussels, and in Paris. He started working in a Symbolist style, but after the First World War became a Flemish Expressionist painter in the style of the painters of the group of Sint-Martens-Latem like Gustave Van de Woestijne. In 1917 he had his first exposition, of illustrations he made for a work by Emile Verhaeren. He exposed together with the Flemish Expressionists at the 1923 Salon d'Automne in Paris. He had a solo exhibition in Pittsburgh, at the Carnegie Institute, in 1924, where all 60 paintings were sold. Retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Mons were organised in 1949 and in 1995.Later in his career, he designed many posters and stained glass windows, including in 1927 the windows for a new building at the University of Mons-Hainaut. He also designed a 50 Belgian Francs banknote.In 1928, he founded the art group Groupe Nervia together with Louis Buisseret. From 1932 on, he was a professor at the La Cambre school and at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.He lived most of his career in Braine-le-Château, and died in Ixelles in 1954.

Joseph_Poelaert

Joseph Poelaert (21 March 1817 – 3 November 1879) was a Belgian architect. He was entrusted with important projects in Brussels, such as Saint Catherine's Church, the Church of Our Lady of Laeken, the Congress Column, the Royal Theatre of la Monnaie and above all, the Palace of Justice. He was also the great-uncle of the architect Henri Van Dievoet.

Peyo

Pierre Culliford (French: [kylifɔʁd]; 25 June 1928 – 24 December 1992) was a Belgian comics writer and artist who worked under the pseudonym Peyo ([pejo]). His best-known works are the comic book series The Smurfs and Johan and Peewit, the latter in which the Smurfs first appeared.

Rik_Wouters

Hendrik Emil (Rik) Wouters (21 August 1882 – 11 July 1916) was a Belgian painter, sculptor and draughtsman. Wouters produced 200 paintings, drawings and sculptures in his 34 years before his illness-caused death. he died partway through the First World War on 11 July 1916 in Amsterdam. A sculptor, painter, draughtsman and etcher of typically fauvist style, Wouters' art resembled the works of artists including Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne and André Derain- the "forefathers" of Fauvism.Rik Wouters' art, according to Adams (2018), reflects themes of "warmth and tenderness", his paintings characterised by an array of colours and brush strokes, frequently leaving unpainted canvas to increase this effect. Often depicting his muse-wife, Hélène, Wouters disregarded hidden symbolic inferences within his art in favour of a more "simplistic and genuine" style, distancing himself from mainstream artists. Wouters was educated in fine arts academies in Mechelen and Brussels, however his works usually slightly differ stylistically from other Fauvist artists.Wouters is known primarily for his sculptures and paintings including 'Lady in blue' (1914), 'Self-portrait with cigar' (1914) and ‘Chrysanthèmes’ (1915).

Jean_Delville

Jean Delville, born Jean Libert (19 January 1867 – 19 January 1953), was a Belgian symbolist painter, author, poet, polemicist, teacher, and Theosophist. Delville was the leading exponent of the Belgian Idealist movement in art during the 1890s. He held, throughout his life, the belief that art should be the expression of a higher spiritual truth and that it should be based on the principle of Ideal, or spiritual Beauty. He executed a great number of paintings during his active career from 1887 to the end of the second World War (many now lost or destroyed) expressing his Idealist aesthetic. Delville was trained at the Académie des Beaux-arts in Brussels and proved to be a highly precocious student, winning most of the prestigious competition prizes at the Academy while still a young student. He later won the Belgian Prix de Rome which allowed him to travel to Rome and Florence and study at first hand the works of the artists of the Renaissance. During his time in Italy he created his celebrated masterpiece L'Ecole de Platon (1898), which stands as a visual summary of his Idealist aesthetic which he promoted during the 1890s in his writings, poetry and exhibitions societies, notably the Salons d'Art Idéaliste.
Characteristically, Delville's paintings are idea-based, expressing philosophical ideals derived from contemporary hermetic and esoteric traditions. At the start of his career, his esoteric perspective was mostly influenced by the work of Eliphas Levi, Edouard Schuré, Joséphin Péladan and Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, and later by the Theosophical writings of Helena Blavatsky and Annie Besant. The main underlying theme of his paintings, especially during his early career, has to do with initiation and the transfiguration of the inner life of the soul towards a higher spiritual purpose. Specifically they deal with themes symbolising Ideal love, death and transfiguration as well as representations of Initiates ('light bringers'), and the relationship between the material and metaphysical dimensions. His paintings and finished drawings are an expression of a highly sensitive visionary imagination articulated through precisely observed forms drawn from nature. He also had a brilliant gift for colour and composition and excelled in the representation of human anatomy. Many of his major paintings, such as his Les Trésors de Sathan (1895), l'Homme-Dieu (1903) and Les Ames errantes (1942), represent dozens of figures intertwined in complex arrangements and painted with highly detailed anatomical accuracy. He was an astonishingly skilled draughtsman and painter capable of producing highly expressive works on a grand scale, many of which can be seen in public buildings in Brussels, including the Palais de Justice.
Delville's artistic style is strongly influenced by the Classical tradition. He was a lifelong advocate of the value of the Classical training taught in the Academies. He believed that the discipline acquired as a result of this training was not an end in itself, but rather a valuable means of acquiring a solid drawing and painting technique to allow artists freely to develop their personal artistic style, without inhibiting their individual creative personality. Delville was a respected Academic art teacher. He was employed at the Glasgow School of Art from 1900 to 1906 and as Professor of drawing at the Académie des Beaux-arts in Brussels thereafter until 1937.
He was also a prolific and talented author. He published a very great number of journal articles during his lifetime as well as four volumes of poetry, including his Le Frisson du Sphinx (1897) and Les Splendeurs Méconnues (1922). He authored more than a dozen books and pamphlets relating to art and esoteric subjects. The most important of his published books include his esoteric works, Dialogue entre Nous (1895) and Le Christ Reviendra (1913) as well as his seminal work on Idealist art, La Mission de l'Art (1900). He also created and edited several contemporary journals and newspapers during the 1890s promoting his Idealist aesthetic including L'Art Idéaliste and La Lumière.
Delville was an energetic artistic entrepreneur, creating several influential artistic exhibition societies, including Pour l'Art and the Salons de l'Art Idéaliste in the 1890s and later, the Société de l'Art Monumental in the 1920s which was responsible for the decoration of public buildings including the mosaics in the hemicycle of the Cinquantenaire in Brussels. He also founded the very successful Coopérative artistique, which provided affordable art materials for artists at the time.