Nicolas Eekman

Nicolas Eekman (1889-1973) was the heir of the great creators of his native Flanders, from Hieronymus Bosch to James Ensor. Born in Brussels where he studied architecture, he turned to painting and settled in Nuenen for four years in the presbytery where Vincent Van Gogh lived, before settling in Paris in 1921. Close to his compatriot Piet Mondrian, with whom he exhibited at the Jeanne Bucher gallery in 1928, he was also very close to the artists Jean Lurçat, Louis Marcoussis, Max Jacob, Jacques Lipchitz, and later Moïse Kisling and Frans Masereel.

Influenced by Cubism, to which he devoted several significant years, in the 1930s he gradually returned to realism, then turned from the 1950s towards fantasy, reconnecting with Flemish painting of the 15^th and 16^th centuries.

The author of abundant painted work, he was also a recognized designer and engraver whose prints have been collected by multiple print firms, private or public, in Brussels, Berlin, Hamburg, Basel, Budapest, Paris and New York.

Emmanuel Bréon is chief heritage curator at the French Monuments Museum. The author of numerous works, for twenty-five years he directed the Museum of the Thirties which he created in Boulogne-Billancourt, then the National Orangerie Museum in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. He has curated international exhibitions such as “Ruhlmann, a Genius of Art Deco” (2004), “Tamara de Lempicka” (2006), “Paul Klee” (2010), “Model Children, by Claude Renoir to Pierre Arditi” (2009) and, for the City of Architecture and Heritage, “1925, when Art Deco Seduced the World” (2013) and “The Architect: Portraits and Photos” (2017).

Text in French only