Diels Herman

Herman Diels was a Belgian artist, born in Turnhout in 1903 and died in Turnhout in 1986. He was a painter, watercolorist and draftsman. He received his education at the Academy and at the Higher Institute in Antwerp, under the supervision of E. Van Mieghem and Is. sum up. He joined the Jeune Peinture Belge and at the beginning of his career maintained contacts with, among others, P. Delvaux, S. Van Damme and F. Labisse. He mainly practiced figure and portrait painting, but more sporadically also painted (Kempian) landscapes. In the 1960s he evolved from a sedate realism to the direction of Flemish fantasy by inserting unreal figures, clowns and masks, which gave his works an alienating atmosphere. Paul Caso described him in 1961 as a “Cavalier solitaire”. From the press: “The work of H.D. is an ode to colour. The drawing is of secondary importance and serves as the basis for working out his color palette. It is a lyrical painting. His work has certain expressionist ties, sometimes surrealistic to relatively abstract.” From 1924 Herman Diels was a teacher at the Drawing School in Turnhout. In 2017, the retrospective “A Colorful Twilight” was held at the Art Center Hugo Voeten. From the press following this retrospective: “Herman Diels flirts with many art movements in his work: Impressionism, Cloisonnism, Cubism, Fauvism, Surrealism, Magic Realism, Expressionism… He never imitates. He goes his own way.” and “His personal creativity makes the colors explode on the canvases in a style that is difficult to describe. Jeroen Bosch, Diego Velázquez, Jean Antoine Watteau, Francisco Goya, Honoré Daumier, Odilon Redon, Kees van Dongen, Oscar Kokoschka… Diels admired them all palpably, but stubbornly retained his distinct, unparalleled style that makes his work so unique and authentic.” We can find his work in the museums in Antwerp, Ixelles and Turnhout. He is mentioned in BAS I and Two centuries of signatures of Belgian artists. (Piron)