Victor Servranckx (1897 - 1965)

Victor Servranckx is one of the most important abstract artist of Belgium. His Exhibition in 1924 in the Galerie Royale in Brussels held 104 works. As only Belgian representative of the ‘Zuivere Beelding’, he contributed to the International exhibition of Modern Art held in the New-York gallery of the Societé Anonyme, led by Katherine Dreier and Marcel Duchamp. He belongs to the Brussels Avant-Garde movement and writes contributions in the magazine 7Arts. In 1922, he writes together with René Magritte the Manifesto L’art pur. Défense de l’esthétique.

In the rediscovery of the historical avant-garde, after de second world war, he becomes entangled in a controversy of who was the first abstract Belgian Artist. That his work of the twenties is of an astonishing quality is without question and can easily compete with work of his French colleagues like  Georges Valmier (1885-1937). Typical for his non-figurative œuvre are the imitation of materials and the suggestion of mechanical movement in strong stylised forms, very close to the French Purism.
Servranckx titles his works with Opus and a number. This is completely in the line of the idea of collective art. Herein the work is completely detached from a referential frame and free for interpretation purely on its geometrical appearance. 

His work evolves to a kind of abstract surrealism in which geometrical forms are combined with organic elements. After the Second World War he returns to the formal abstraction and will actively collaborate with a new generation of abstract painters like Paul van Hoeydonck and Jo Delahaut. His international status continued to grow with as highlight the World exhibition of 1958, in which he was the only abstract Belgian painter represented.