Albert Saverys was one of the most important Belgian painters of the Interwar period. He was born in Deinze. His father was a decorative painter and he sent his son at the age of ten to what was then called 'line drawing' class, and later to the 'decoration' class. He later studied at the Academies of Deinze and Ghent with, among others, J. Delvin.

His artistic career began in the 1910s with works in the impressionist tradition of Emile Claus. James Ensor also inspires him and Vincent van Gogh. He discovered the latter at an exhibition in Brussels. “That possessed color never left me. My first years were strongly under his influence.”

Albert showed himself to be ambitious. On May 2, 1914, just before the outbreak of war, the painter Gust de Smet founded the General Art Association for East and West Flanders. Saverys was one of the first to register, but he later also became a member of the Ghent art circle Art and Knowledge. These memberships offer him the opportunity to exhibit, sometimes with Emile Claus, whom he admires. Wherever he had the opportunity, he submitted work for the few exhibitions during WWI. Saverys' early work shows all traces of the influences he underwent at the time; in particular the lumnists of the Leie school and Van Gogh. Paintings by Saverys are still considered among the highlights of Flemish Luminism.

After the war, Saverys chose a path to innovation under the influence of his friends and Constant Permeke, Gust. De Smet and Frits Van den Berghe, who discovered Dutch and German expressionism abroad during the First World War. This innovation involved a removal of the aesthetic and objective perception. The work was paramount, and what was proposed was merely an occasion. He experiments with paint, color and composition in a series of still lifes, portraits and landscapes.

Painter of the Lys
He is best known for his many variations on the landscape around the Leie, which he painted from 1920 until his death in 1964. From 1923 he lived in the villa 'Ter Kauwkeshoek' in Petegem-aan-de-Leie, with a garden bordering the river. In hundreds of watercolors and oil paintings he depicted the landscape around the river Leie, playing with the colors of the changing seasons. He sometimes painted the landscape in thick paint. Unpainted areas sometimes provide light and air in a painting. In addition to expressionism, Saverys also continues to apply impressionism and a cheerful range of colors.

Colorful expressionist

It is not only the rural environment of Deinze that inspires him, but also the sea, the fishing life and the city. His brushwork is impulsive and he creates compositions in which he introduces 'tilting' perspective lines that portray a dynamic force. His colorful expressionism is fragmented, but still has a powerful, coherent style through color and texture.

In 1926 Saverys started a series of still lifes, mostly with fish, usually a large ray in the middle and various other species arranged around it. They were readily sold and are currently in various museum collections. He also makes flower arrangements. They enable him to release his color and form from accidental circumstances. The still life in particular can be stripped relatively easily of everything that is superfluous.

He was extremely successful. His work was shown almost continuously in Brussels galleries between the two world wars. He was also known abroad for his six participations in the Venice Biennale. During the crisis years, he was also appointed as a teacher at the Antwerp academy, where he taught until 1951. He was suspended for a year after WWII because he, with 74 other Belgian artists, had participated in an art exhibition by the Germans.

Under the leadership of Baron Opsomer, the Antwerp academy had become a kind of school for Flemish neo-impressionism. The result: pale colors and vague lines, a 'chalky dissolution of the form', as one critic aptly called it. With his expressionist attitude, Saverys counterbalanced this 'fashionable French fancy dress'. He did not take a different path again and stuck to his 'craft': powerful, decorative and always fresh compositions of color and shape.