The Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere (b. 1964) is a sculptor and a painter. She lives and works in the city of her birth, Ghent in Flanders, which experienced some of the most destructive fighting in the First World War. In the year 2000, the In Flanders Fields Museum commissioned De Bruyckere to make a work bearing its own name in which casts of dead horses – the innocent victims of war – served as a metaphor for suffering and the loss of human life. Another horse-themed work was to become De Bruyckere’s artistic breakthrough three years later at the Venice Biennale and she has continued to address this topic ever since.
The origins of De Bruyckere´s art lie in the history of painting, in Christian iconography, literature and ancient mythology. Her rendering of skin- and flesh tones is mainly inspired by paintings of the Renaissance. She has been using wax since 1996 and her training as a painter is evident in the multiple layers of paint on her wax sculptures.
The spring exhibition 2018 of the Sara Hildén Art Museum presented an overview of the moving works of the sculptor. In the centenary year of the Finnish Civil War, the exhibition offered an opportunity to confront human suffering and vulnerability. The artist seeks beauty in what is generally seen as loss and she uses her art to express the painful, difficult matters that are deeply rooted in human existence. Consequently, she wants her works to offer compassion and comfort.
This was De Bruyckere’s first solo exhibition in Finland.
The catalogue is richly illustrated
Number of pages: 157
Authors: Antti Nylén & Helena Sederholm
Published by Sara Hildén Art Museum, 2018
