'De Pelgrim', art and meaning in a disenchanted world

A lesser-known aspect of the historical avant-garde is its sometimes metaphysical or religious dimension. And it is indeed present. In a world where modernity is spreading ever faster, a group of Flemish artists founded the Catholic artists’ association De Pelgrim in 1924.

By co-curators Ewald Peters and Dennis Van Mol (Walden Art Stories)

The founders of De Pelgrim – writer and painter Felix Timmermans, architect Flor Van Reeth, and writer Ernest Van der Hallen – aimed for a contemporary deepening of their Christian faith. During its brief existence, De Pelgrim would bring together numerous artists from both home and abroad. They sought to reconcile the pressures of the new with an inner quest for meaning and identity.

Popular attendance

Nearly a century after its founding, De Pelgrim is still little known, but between the two world wars, many of the artists involved played an important role in the intellectual and artistic debate. According to Adriaan Gonnissen, curator of modern art at KMSKA, museum institutions in recent decades have focused primarily on the origins of the avant-garde movements: “In doing so, they overlooked the historical significance of certain ‘rear-guards’ – of which De Pelgrim is one. The avant-garde of the 1920s, for example, was essentially a storm in a teacup, an experiment by a small vanguard. Those radical experiments in color and form were crucial for the development of twentieth-century art, but at the time they did not draw popular crowds at all. The two De Pelgrim exhibitions in Antwerp in 1927 and 1930, however, did.”

Historical, modern, and contemporary baroque

The persuasive power and the way De Pelgrim thematized the tension between artistic and religious tradition and innovation recall an earlier period in art history: the Baroque. The exhibition on De Pelgrim indeed fits within the city festival Barokke Influencers. Director Harold Polis: “Barokke Influencers is an Antwerp city festival that aims to encourage visitors to reflect on the intellectual and material legacy of the Jesuit order. To convince their audience of their religious convictions and social engagement, they developed a unique visual culture, a strategy that proved particularly successful. At the heart of the festival are three exhibitions on historical, modern, and contemporary Baroque.”

For the historical section, three Antwerp institutions have joined forces. At Museum Snijders & Rockoxhuis, the St. Charles Borromeo Church, and the Nottebohm Hall of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, more than forty top pieces from Belgium and abroad by Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob de Wit, and Daniël Seghers illustrate the art of persuasion in the 17th century. But Barokke Influencers aims to look beyond the 17th century. Polis: “For the 20th century, we came to De Pelgrim: the movement emerges at a historical moment, shortly after the First World War, when many people were searching, and a new visual language was strategically deployed to continue conveying a larger project of meaning. As the cherry on top, the Havenhuis will serve as a contemporary meeting space to reflect on the importance of artistic tradition and innovation in our super-diverse society. These three exhibitions are supported and interwoven with a side program of city walks and lectures.”

Tradition and modernity

The choice to present De Pelgrim’s “modern Baroque story” in the Cabinet of Prints at KMSKA is no coincidence. Gonnissen: “De Pelgrim connects the two worlds within this museum, both historically and aesthetically. In this sense, the exhibition forms a beautiful link between the old and the new sections, between Rubens’ iconography and the visual language of the 20th-century moderns. The tension between tradition and innovation is characteristic of De Pelgrim. In the exhibition, this is visualized, among other things, through depictions of mystics and saints such as Ruusbroec and Francis, who most inspired De Pelgrim’s members on their journey inward. Calm, almost academic representations of these figures clash with evocations in a visual language strongly influenced by the use of form and color in the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century.”

In addition, the key figures of the Catholic renouveau movement are highlighted, including Eugeen Yoors, Felix Timmermans, Herman Deckers, Dirk Vansina, and Albert Servaes. International contributors such as Jan Toorop, Frederik van Eeden, and Tone Kralj are also featured, as well as Paul Joostens and Prosper De Troyer, avant-gardists one might not immediately expect in a Catholic artists’ association, because they did not strictly separate the religious from the secular. Or, as Van Ostaijen put it: for them, even the devil could be a path to God. Special attention is given to De Pelgrim’s modernist architecture, with architects such as Flor Van Reeth, Jef Huygh, and Huib Hoste. Some of their ambitious building projects are, in essence, magnificent examples of Gesamtkunst—projects in which architects, painters, sculptors, designers, and glass artists join forces to realize a kind of total art.

Community art

The concept of “Gesamtkunst” could be called a buzzword of the radical avant-garde movements of the 1920s and 1930s, but it also appears in the context of De Pelgrim. In those years, the historical avant-garde excelled primarily in theoretical discussions. These debates focused on how new art could contribute to the new world that would arise from the ruins of the First World War. The figure of Jozef Peeters, the Antwerp constructivist strongly influenced by the advanced abstraction of De Stijl, illustrates this well. In the first half of the 1920s, Peeters repeatedly tried to clarify his definition of community art. Because of their shared religious convictions, the members of De Pelgrim felt less need for a formal definition. Their story was anchored a priori. In a disenchanted world where social, economic, and cultural certainties were under pressure, many could not separate the numerous challenges from a fundamental fear of decline. It is precisely this fear of spiritual emptiness and loss of identity that the Pelgrims sought to counter with a recognizable shared narrative: they connected their traditional Catholic faith to their contemporary artistic practice. For the construction of a church or a school, it was enough to collaborate intensively from the basis of their faith to realize community art.

This article was previously published in ZAAL Z 44.