EEMANS, MARC (Belgian, 1907-1998)

As a pupil at the Brussels Academy, Eemans met the Belgian Constructivist Victor Servranckx, who taught him the principles of abstraction. At fifteen, Eemans was the youngest painter to participate in the first activities of the constructivist group in Belgium. His abstract canvases are meticulously balanced compositions, executed in solemn colours. These works hold a certain mystique and spiritual dimension which remained present in his entire work.
Around 1926 Eemans moved away from abstraction after befriending members of the ‘Societé du Mystere’, the Belgian surrealist group. His surreal paintings draw inspiration from the spiritual qualities of Pre-Raphaelite painting, German Romanticism and fin-de-siècle Symbolism, which were all explicitly referred to in André Breton’s ‘Second Manifeste’ (1929), as ways of ‘occulting’ surrealism.
Eemans’s surrealist subject matter revolves around the erotic and the female body, which is on occasion dressed in nineteenth century clothing, predating Delvaux’s preference for old fashion by over ten years. In 1928 his friend E.L.T. Mesens organised his first show at the l’Epoque gallery which had previously exhibited the works of Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, Jean Arp and Paul Klee.
In 1939 he was invited along with Magritte to exhibit at the Indépendants’ exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
Active as a poet and writer Eemans contributed to the surrealist review ‘Distances’, which his friend Camille Goemans, first to deal in the work of Dali, directed from Paris. Once at the core of the developments of ideas within the Belgian surrealist group, Eemans decided to officially leave the Belgian surrealist group not because of ideological reasons but in order to carry on his surrealist experience in solitary. His friendships with E.L.T. Mesens, Magritte and Camille Goemans lasted a lifetime.

Public collections include:
Cabinet des Estampes, Brussels
Musée d’Art Moderne, Gand