Erich Heckel in Flanders

This monograph illuminates a less well-known yet coherent and deeply familiar period in the artistic career of the German expressionist Erich Heckel (1883-1970). The book contextualizes the beginnings and the evolution of his work in the years from 1905 to 1918.

Like many German artists and intellectuals, Heckel volunteered to go to the front in 1914. He ended up on a hospital train that took him to Flanders (Belgium). He remained there until the end of the First World War, working as an orderly in Roeselare, Ostend and Ghent. The platoon was led by a young curator from the Nationalgalerie in Berlin. He had assembled the unit from artists and writers. And thus an artists' colony arose in Ostend where, thanks to the many quiet periods, there was also time for art.

In Flanders, Heckel sketched the daily events in the emergency hospital, the places he visited and the people he encountered. He made woodcuts depicting the expressive heads of the orderlies and their patients, as well as of Biblical subjects such as The Madonna of Ostend and The Good Samaritan. As a painter, he was particularly impressed by the landscape and the sea, and the unusual cloud formations. Heckel's landscapes and seascapes are the highlight of this lesser-known but important and coherent period. They are born of observation and perception, memory and desire. These works are romantic and expressive, natural and symbolic, spiritual and tangible, nostalgic and above all in these difficult times, eminently hopeful.

Lieven Van Den Abeele (b. 1957, Aalst, Belgium) is an art historian, writer and curator. He was the editor of Artefactum Magazine (1986-1989); art critic and Paris-based correspondent for the newspaper De Standaard (1982-2012); lecturer at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in both Nîmes and Bordeaux (1990-2011) and at KASK Ghent (2008-2022); education officer at the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent (2012-2022). He has published regular contributions in various international catalogues and art magazines and collaborated on Art in Belgium since 1975 (Mercatorfonds, 2001). Lieven Van Den Abeele is the author of monographic studies on the Belgian artists Philippe Vandenberg (Imschoot, 1999), Luc Claus (Ludion, 2009) and Patrick Van Caeckenbergh (MSK, 2012-2022).

Exhibition in MSK (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium, 12 October 2024 - 26 January 2025.