Author Bio
Alfred Joseph Pietercelie was born in Antwerp in 1879 and showed an early aptitude towards the arts. At the age of fourteen, he enrolled at the Academy of Antwerp where he learned the rudiments of painting in an Impressionist manner. Graduating to the Brussels Academy and finally the Anderlecht Academy, he completed his studies in 1900. It appears that for a number of years he struggled to gain recognition and indeed it was not until 1917 that he first exhibited his work. The group ‘L’Oeuvre Nouvelle’ was the first to give him a show where his landscapes and still-lifes were well received by the public and critics alike. Various contemporary art writers describe his paintings as full of color, sensitivity, harmony and solitude. Although he spent most of his life around Brussels, he spent a couple of months each year in the Midi area of France where he found the light particularly conducive to his work. In 1936 he settled in the town of Jette, north of Brussels, where he co-founded another art group known as Cercle Jecta. It was in the town of Jette where Alfred Pietercelie died in 1955. Today his paintings are housed in the museums of Anderlecht and La Louviere in Belgium.
Lit; E. Benezit
Arto
P. Piron