Victor Servranckx

Victor Servranckx was a Belgian abstract painter and industrial designer, whose avant-garde paintings showed influences of surrealism, cubism, and constructivism and were prominently displayed with the Société Anonyme. He was a close friend of René Magritte, who he met during their studies at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and with whom he wrote “Pure Art: A Defense of the Aesthetic” in 1922. Deeply invested in furthering abstract art’s progressive social dimension, Servranckx would refer to his sculptural work as “plastique pure.” His paintings from the early 1920s most closely align him stylistically and ideologically with the concurrent Russian Constructivist movement, and his various works – all entitled “Opus” and individually numbered – from this period celebrate the delineated geometries of the machine age and industry. From 1925, Servranckx shifted the focus of his practice to architecture and interior design, presenting his creations at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris in 1925. Notable solo exhibitions would follow, in 1928 at Der Sturm gallery in Berlin and 1929 at the Palais de Beaux-Arts Brussels where his great retrospective was later staged in 1947. In 1958, Servranckx represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale. Servranckx’s work is held in major museum collections including, the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig – mumok, Vienna; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.