Octave Landuyt is celebrating his 100th birthday today. Landuyt is seen as one of Belgium’s most important artists. He’s a painter, sculptor but has also made jewels and designed interiors and costumes for opera.
Four enormous works by Octave Landuyt forming “Ultimate Travel” embellish the Naamse Poort metro station in Brussels. Strange faces and hands represent birth, love, adulthood and death.
Landuyt’s sculpted works are made in bronze and ceramics. His style is hard to pigeonhole, but combines the fantastic, the surrealist with disfigured human and animal forms. The artist has exhibited widely at home and abroad including at the Venice Biennial and Documenta in Kassel (Germany). His works hang in many important museums.
Landuyt is seen as the last surviving multidisciplinary artist of his generation.
The exhibition “Panta rhei: Octave Landuyt 100” is currently running at De Mijlpaal Gallery in Heusden-Zolder (Limburg). It also includes works by artists who sought inspiration in his work including Camiel van Breedam, Hubert Minnebo, Koen Vanmechelen, Nedda El-Asmar, Lore Langendries. It runs till 12 February.