1924 – hundred years later / 1924 – honderd jaar later
In 2024 Sint-Martens-Latem is celebrating the municipality’s 1200th anniversary. On the occasion of that celebration year, De Latemse Kunstkring, in collaboration with the local government, is working on an exhibition that took place 100 years ago in Sint-Martens-Latem in Gustave van de Woestyne’s studio. The exhibition Laathemsche Kunstkolonie featured numerous artists working in Sint-Martens-Latem at that time, or in the years before.
It was the ambition of a working group to reconstruct that 1924 exhibition. With the original catalogue in hand, they set out to find the works exhibited at the time, establishing fairly quickly that this was an impossible task. Many works could not be traced, others could not be authenticated because the title had been changed.
But the result of the search continues to surprise. Art lovers can see a very diverse collection of works that had hardly been exhibited until now, such as Ooidonkdreef by Frits Van den Berghe and The Mayor by Gustave van de Woestyne. And how surprising is the sculpture The Baadster by Louis DuBar, or the confrontation of a typical Servaes landscape with a similar one by the searching Permeke, or the naive but so tender work by Albijn Van den Abeele or Seraphijn De Rijcke? And how fascinating is the link with other arts, such as Jules De Praetere’s printing or Elisabeth De Saedeleer’s art craft?
So this reconstruction exhibition takes you back in time for a while. It is supported by a catalogue with fine illustrations and comprehensible descriptions of the artists. Also included are some press reactions from the time and a critical review by Karel van de Woestijne. On this basis, visitors/art lovers can decide for themselves whether or not history has done the shuffling appropriately.
