The KMSKA is proud to announce that its collection is soon to receive a major endowment from the Eugeen Van Mieghem Foundation. Having worked passionately since 1982 to promote the Van Mieghem name, the Foundation has decided to transfer no fewer than 226 artworks to the KMSKA.
Eugeen Van Mieghem and Antwerp
Van Mieghem (1875-1930) is inextricably linked to the city of Antwerp. Recurrent themes in his work are life in and around the port of Antwerp and nightlife on the Keyserlei. Observation was Van Mieghem’s guiding principle, social awareness the driving force. He worked like a chronicler, capturing often difficult moments in daily life, including during the war years. He produced drawings in pencil, charcoal, watercolour, ink or pastel and, to a lesser extent, paintings and prints.
The social nature of his work along with his sketchy, impressionistic style have prompted many a modern-day critic to compare him to some of his foreign contemporaries like Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Jean-Louis Forain and Käthe Kollwitz. Van Mieghem also played an active role in Antwerp’s cultural life, including the artists’ associations De Kapel, Eenigen and Kunst van Heden, where he regularly showed his work and sold to Antwerp collectors like François Franck.
The Eugeen Van Mieghem Foundation
The Eugeen Van Mieghem Foundation will continue to build on its objective of giving the artist the prominence he deserves. This it does through publications, talks and exhibitions as well as its museum, which houses a collection of the artist’s work assembled over the last 42 years. To safeguard that sizeable and valuable collection for the future, the Foundation elected to transfer a large part of it permanently to the KMSKA.
"The KMSKA is the perfect home for Eugeen Van Mieghem. Besides being Flanders’ largest art museum, representing both nationally and internationally acclaimed artists, it was the Foundation’s wish that all 226 artworks should stay together. The KMSKA has the resources and expertise to fulfil that wish. "
226 artworks
The endowment consists of 226 works of art and covers every period of Van Mieghem’s work. Of those 226 artworks, 215 are representative of his well-rounded artistry. The collection consists mainly of drawings, but there are also oil paintings, monotypes, pastels, etchings and lithographs. These are complemented by a number of works by Chagall, Steinlen, Ossip Zadkine, Valentine Prax, Jean Lurçat and others. The endowment also includes portraits by Van Mieghem of, for example, James Ensor, Willem Elsschot and Eugeen Van Mieghem junior.
The endowment signifies first and foremost an appreciable addition to the KMSKA’s Van Mieghem collection, which until now has consisted of just two paintings and three drawings. It also ties in very nicely with works in the KMSKA collection by Van Mieghem’s fellow citizens Victor Hageman and Charles Mertens, and by George Hendrik Breitner, Isaac Israëls and Jacob Smits. They, too, took a highly intuitive approach to drawing and painting social themes that are still relevant today.