A Year: Day to Day Men: 28th of April
A Road Well Traveled
April 28, 1879 was the birthdate of Edgard Tytgat, the Flemish painter and etcher.
Edgard Tytgat was a Belgium based artist: a painter, author, and engraver. He studied at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts where he discovered the new movements of symbolism and post-impressionism. It was artists like Cezanne and Bonnard that influenced his work.
One of the publications with woodcuts that he produced in 1917 after the death of his friend, Wouters, is the volume “Quelques Images de la Vie d’un Artiste” (Some Images of an Artists’ Life), of which he singlehandedly printed forty numbered copies. By every one of the sixteen intentionally naïve prints Tytgat wrote a short text about the life of Rik and Nel Wouters, whom he knew so well.
Tytgat’s style evolved from local Fauvism to a wayward Expressionism with a popular and naïve character. During his career Edgard Tytgat painted nearly five hundred canvases and made countless watercolors, woodcuts, etchings and drawings. Even though he belonged to the group of artists associated with the journal Sélection, his work cannot be placed in any one particular camp. It is difficult to divide his work into well-defined periods, and it lacks clear chronological development. His earliest works are considered impressionistic, while later works can be described as expressionistic or naive.
Tytgat’s world was bittersweet. He was thoroughly familiar with art history and often drew inspiration from classic themes. His works are often bathed in an atmosphere of lost innocence or youth, fantasies, and eroticism. Everyday life and incidents from his own environment were also a great source of inspiration. However, Tytgat’s real strength was his virtuoso manner of storytelling. He invested images that at first glance seem naive, childlike and cheerful with a dark side. In this way he was able to create a complex web of meanings. A multitude of scenarios play out within a single image.