Paul Joostens (1889-1960) - The Two Ladies

Oil on canvas. Original canvas. Signed lower left. Paul Joostens was not merely an artist, but a solitary visionary and the great deconstructor of 20th-century Belgian aesthetics. His figure stands as a mystical bridge between the chaos of modernity and the purity of the Gothic past. Emerging from the vibrant Antwerp scene, Joostens was the first herald of rupture, an indomitable spirit who dared to fragment reality through Cubism and Dadaism, becoming the undisputed master of collage and assemblage in Flanders. His wooden constructions and polymaterial compositions were not mere formal exercises, but relics of a new era, where the vestiges of civilization were transformed into sacred objects. However, the true extent of his genius lies in his astonishing spiritual duality. After leading the way in the anarchy of forms, Joostens retreated into the depths of his psyche, merging the avant-garde with a profound and unsettling medieval mysticism. It was during this mature period that his "Gothic-Dadaist" style was born, a perfect symbiosis of geometric abstraction and archaic devotion. Obsessed with the figure of the eternal woman—embodied in his enigmatic and stylized Poezeloezen—and with the melancholy of dead cities like Bruges, his brush became an instrument of almost religious introspection. Joostens, the "monk of modernity", lived and died in aristocratic solitude, leaving behind a labyrinthine body of work of technical purity and exhilarating poetry, establishing itself as an essential reference for understanding the anguish and beauty of the contemporary Flemish soul. - Image dimensions without frame: 57 x 65 cm / 65 x 73 cm with an exclusive custom-made American-style frame.