Frits Van den Berghe was one of the most interesting Belgian expressionist artists of the first part of the twentieth century. He started his career at the turn of the century influenced by the Symbolist and Luminist artists who were grouped in Laethem-Saint-Martin. Soon afterwards, around 1908, he wrote a manifesto together with his friend and fellow artist Gustave De Smet opposing Impressionism 'à la Claus.' During the First World War, he lived in the Netherlands, a period of existential doubt which slowed down his pictorial activity. Nevertheless the Cubism of the French artist Henri Le Fauconnier as well the Futurist movement were a revelation for him. The magazine Das Kunstblatt to which Gustave De Smet had subscribed opened the door for Van Den Berghe to the German Expressionist movement. On his return in 1922 the art critics and dealers P.G. van Hecke and André de Ridder were of overriding importance for his first breakthrough to the gallery Sélection and in 1926 to the gallery Le Centaure. The international allure of Le Centaure, which exhibited the works of Lhote, Leger, Arp, Klee, Foujita, Zadkine, Miro and Ernst, encouraged Van Den Berghe's surrealist development. The Max Ernst exhibition at Le Centaure in 1927 had a great impact on him and from that moment on, he tried to detach himself from traditional painting.
Between 1928 and 1932, Frits Van den Berghe revealed a new direction in his oeuvre. He developed a series of paintings that dealt with the psychic self-portrait in a symbolist way. He used one central figure symbolizing himself surrounded by companions. These companions represent the secret thoughts, fears and urges of the artist. They are personified by sinner creatures usually half-human and half-animal. In the present lot these creatures literally emerge out of the central figure and seem to be swarming over one another. The present lot is a beautiful and impressive example of this intense and reflective period of the artist. Other works of this series are Stoet van Maskers (1930), De Metgezellen (1932) and Portrait of the Artist (1933).