Jean Brusselmans, Still Life with Slices of Smoked Sausage, 1936

BOZAR - Centre for Fine Arts Brussels (Palais des Beaux-Arts)Mont des Arts

Jean Brusselmans: Painter by Nature

In corso2 ottobre 2026 – 31 gennaio 202720 €

Retrospective of the Belgian painter (1884-1953), about 120 works and his reconstructed 1936 sets for Schoenberg's Erwartung.

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Altro a Bruxelles

In corso Il programma di novembre 2026

In Kitchen (1935), his wife Marie grinds coffee under an oil lamp, a red jug above the stove. Brusselmans painted what he handled every day, curator Ann Geeraerts says, and kept rearranging the coffee pot, the herring plate and the slices of blood sausage until the picture got better.

About 120 paintings, drawings and etchings, some out of storage for decades, make this his first big retrospective in about 45 years. You go from early work near his friend Rik Wouters to the flat, built-up 1930s, with a gallery pairing him with Léger and a detour to Kristof Santy's take on his lost 1936 Erwartung sets. He named his Dilbeek house the Cold Hearth, since a poor painter's stays cold: a joke anyone heating a Brussels flat in January gets.

It's in Circuit Royal. Tickets are €20, €14 under 26, free under 18, or €28 with Kentridge the same day. Some rooms are hard to reach, so wheelchair users should contact Bozar first.

Da non perdere

Kitchen (1935)
Look for Marie grinding coffee at the stove, with the red jug and oil lamp that turn up again and again in his still lifes.
The woman in the straw hat
Look for the same straw-hatted farm woman at the centre of Farmers (1928), then cut flat as paper, in profile, in Harvest (1934).
The Bath of the Vagabonds (1936)
Bathers on the canal between Molenbeek and Anderlecht, with the City Hall, the cathedral and the Palace of Justice on the skyline behind.
The Erwartung sets, remade
Kristof Santy repainted two of the four lost sets Brusselmans made for Schoenberg's opera in this building in 1936, working without projections.
Still Life with Slices of Smoked Sausage (1936)
Look for Brussels blood sausage, sliced and arranged on the table like any other still-life object.