| August Gillé - Belgium's Forgotten Painter |
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 I am pleased to be featuring August Gillé. (1892-1989). This "forgotten artist" from Belgium created nearly 10,000 paintings within his lifetime. I have been having email conversations with the webmaster of August-Gille.be, Dominik Lybaert. He had the pleasure of knowing Mr. Gillé personally, since he was around "played near the house of Mr. Gillé and he was very kind to the childeren and for me." Dominik strongly wishes for the world to know about this quintessential painter.Gillé suffered a serious WWI injury (he was shot through his right hand and arm in 1915). After the war, he resumed painting and sculpting in 1919. "He followed the Academy of fine Arts in Mechelen and Brussels and became famous, but he didn't like commercial stuff he loved more nature, flowers,... instead of commercial galleries," Dominik Lybaert explains. By the Thirties, Gillé was a famous artist, loved by such contemporaries as Gustave Van denear Woestijne, De Troyer, and famous Belgian poet Alice Nahon.  Gillé had a 19 year old girlfriend when he was 42 years of age, though she decided to marry someone else in 1946. He gave up smoking, drinking alcohol and became a vegetarian, and was otherwise considered eccentric.Dominik writes, "I read the memories in his diaries during WW1 when he describe the sky painted with colourful red flames, the horror of war, the insanity of mankind." The colours of his work appear to be strongly influenced by the war. Driven by an internal moral compass, he became poor. Famous, wealthy people wanted to buy his work, but he refused them. Nature and his immediate environment were favorite subjects in his pieces. "He loved "his" trees, they were his best friends and when a tree was damaged by lightning he was unhappy." When his mother died in 1942 during WW2, he was depressed for the remainder of the decade. He never stopped painting and creating during this time period. He had a personal breakthrough in the fifties and regained a new thirst for life. He started on a series of many, many abstract and realistic paintings. From 1963-1982, he had his own gallery, which utilized a white flag - a peaceful protest against all war. To this day, famous and emerging artists can show their work in his gallery for free. Dominik says that, "In 1980 he gave everything he had (all his works, statues, everything!) to the community of my village Bonheiden with one simple wish to give some publicity after his death." He died at the ripe old age of 97, and his pieces festered in storage.  Dominik Lybaert took it upon himself to bring these poorly preserved and deteriorating pieces (mostly paint on paper) to the world. He is still adding new works to an extensive gallery on August-Gille.be of some of the thousands of beautiful, colourful creations of this previously "forgotten" Belgian master. Each piece provided on the site is available in high resolution, giving visitors to the site every opportunity to inspect details of the pieces. This willingness to share the work with the world is noteworthy alone. He gave his work to the community. He gave his art to the world. Literally. Now you have the opportunity to see it, enjoy it... and spread the word. "Life is strange," says Dominik, "as I call him a "Forgotten painter" - no statue of him on his grave, no flower, nothing at all, even not a photo..." If you want to learn more about Gillé, consier picking up Dominik Lybaert's book on his life. It is 84 pages long and is written in Dutch. (Contact through August-Gille.be.)
To view Gillé's many, many works, click on "Galerij" when visiting inside August-Gille.be, where more pieces are being added regularly. Visit August-Gille.be On Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/august_gille |
