Albert Saverys

Since 2005, the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens has regularly organized collection deep-dives around specific artists represented in its own collection. The intention is to explore the intrinsic qualities of the artist. These exhibitions do not have retrospective pretensions but are rather meant to reconsider the artist's body of work from a renewed perspective, demonstrating its contemporary relevance.

Albert Saverys is often considered a follower or successor of the well-known generation of Flemish expressionist artists. This perception stems from his fame primarily associated with the numerous variations of the Leie landscape that he created from 1935 until he died in 1964. In hundreds of watercolours and oil paintings from that period, he stereotyped the Leie landscape, playing with the changing seasonal colours. However, as early as the 1920s, he developed a highly personal and expressive painting style that clearly distinguished him from the works of Gust De Smet, Constant Permeke, and Frits Van den Berghe, who were also in full swing during that time. This collection deep-dive aims to focus primarily on the adventurous way in which Saverys experimented with painting in the period 1924—1934.