Frans Masereel (1889 -1972)
Port de Boulogne, 1929
oil on canvas, 73x60cm
MG-1241

Frans Masereel’s painting belongs to the socially engaged artistic current. He began his education in 1907 at the École des Beaux-Arts in Ghent, and as early as 1908 and 1909 he visited England and Germany where he came into contact with Expressionism. Soon after, in 1911, he moved to Paris. The most important works from his first period are related to his stay in Switzerland where he worked as a graphic arts magazine editor, where he also met Stefan Zweig, Romain Roland and a group of pacifists, which is going to greatly influence his views. This is also when he created his wordless novel. Between 1921 and 1925, he lived in Paris and Berlin and in 1925 he eventually settled in Boulogne-sur-Mar. This was the period marked by creativity in the framework of the Neue Sachlichkeit. He was a close friend of Georg Grosz.

Masereel is a chronicler of urban districts that people tend to avoid – dark side of the streets, dingy cafés, port workers one looks away from because of discomfort their hard work and life provoke, women exhausted from working day and night and those who wander alone at night and wait, because the only thing they have left is their own body.

The painting Port de Boulogne is a fragment of a gloomy cityscape dominated by the monumental bows of large cargo ships. The ships’ funnels and masts rise in the background. Dark clouds hover over the condensed scene stifled by the large heavy iron masses of ships. The cold, massive surfaces of ships’ bows with hawseholes and a sharp edge down the middle, as fearsome as some monstruous machines, are staring at the observer, the human being looking at the image. In the right corner of the painting, at the base of the pyramidal composition, are two small figures of sailors. The entire scene is a textbook example of the reverse perspective: the large is important, the small is less important or even unimportant! The grey-brown colourway closes the circle of hopelessness and insignificant existence of these people in relation to things. Masareel’s visual language is simple: the colouristically gloomy planes are clearly arranged one behind the other, establishing an artistically and metaphorically unjust order that is difficult to disturb.

Tekst: Dajana Vlaisavljević, Museum Advisor at the National Museum of Moder Art ©National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić©National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

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