The city of Ostend on Thursday kicked off ‘Ensor 2024,’ a year-long celebration of the life and work of famous painter James Ensor, and a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of his death in 1949.
As part of the celebration of the memory of the painter, who lived and worked in the coastal town, Ostend will rebaptise itself as ‘Ensor City’ in 2024.
Ensor 2024 is essentially an urban festival with over 100 events and activities, alongside six exhibitions, including ‘Pink, Pink, Pink to My Eyes. James Ensor and Still Life in Belgium 1830 – 1930,' and ‘Great Art for Small Aficionados.’
Both will be premiered this weekend.
The ‘Pink, Pink, Pink to My Eyes’ exhibition will take place in the Mu.ZEE art museum. It will feature some 50 works by Ensor from Belgium and abroad, supplemented by 100 still lifes from other modernists, contemporaries and precursors of the Ostend legend.
“We hope this experience will be enriching for our visitors thanks to all the talented painters present here,” said Mu.ZEE director, Dominique Savelkoul.
“Some of them have been unjustly forgotten,” she said, “and yet it is thanks to their know-how that the genre, which was also described as vivid and decorative without any artistic commitment, can be revived, from both an artistically and an iconographic standpoint.”
The second exhibition, ‘Great Art for Small Aficionados,’ opens this weekend at Fort Napoleon. It is centred around an eponymous book series by Thaïs Vanderheyden and showcases eminent masterpieces of painting for children to enjoy.
As a part of the Ensor year, Vanderheyden has reimagined some of the artist's pieces as parodies aimed at a younger audience.
