Description

Floris Jespers Dry Point Etching ‘Les Quatorze Sabots’

Floris Jespers (1889-1965) expressionist etching from 1935

Entitled : Les Quatorze Sabots (de 14 klompen)

Representing 7 girls standing on a fish, wearing clogs

All around, some interesting and intriguing detailed scenes near the river

The work is an EA (Epreuve Artiste) – below left

Signed in the plate and handsigned below right (exceptional)

Printed on heavy handmade Japanese paper

Very valuable and extremely hard to find etching

Size : 287 x 252 mm (not framed)

Absolute mint condition

Info Floris Jespers :

(Borgerhout (Antwerp), 18 March 1889 – Antwerp, 16 April 1965) was a Flemish-Belgian painter. Jespers was born in an Antwerp artist family. His father Emile Jespers was a sculptor. Together with his older brother Oscar he went to the Academy at a young age. Oscar became a sculptor and Floris painter.

Brother of the famous sculptor Oscar Jespers (1887-1970).

In his initial period (until 1917) his work is very similar to that of Rik Wouters both in terms of color palette and theme. In 1918 a radical break followed. Cubist elements make their appearance and at the beginning of the 1920s he starts to use constructivist concepts and occasionally paints abstract works. But the figurative remains dominant. In the twenties, his most important works with highlights such as Adam and Eve (1924), Het chaakspel (1926), Bonjour Ostende (1927), Salut, Messieurs! (1927), etc. Opinions on Floris Jespers remain divided to date. Some see him as an epigone of many masters, others stress that in the following of several styles he could always retain a certain authenticity.

Jespers was friends with Paul van Ostaijen. He followed his studies at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Antwerp under the direction of Franz Courtens (1854-1943). He painted (among other things, glass paintings), drew, made prints, painted murals, sculpted and made designs for tapestries. Worked in Antwerp, Knokke (summer months), Brittany and Normandy (1928), Our (1940-1945).

Jespers made various study trips to Congo between 1951 and 1957. He was a member of art group Sélection atelier d’Art (1920), Kunst van Heden (1921-1927), La Centaure (1922), L’Art Vivant (1931) and the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.