Pierre Hendrix

Antwerp, 3 April 1913 – Antwerp, 8 April 1995

Pierre Hendrix was a Flemish painter, active in Antwerp and its surroundings. He belongs to the generation of figurative painters who, after the Second World War, remained faithful to landscape, portraiture and still life, even as abstraction gained influence. Over the years his palette grew lighter and looser under the influence of colour expressionism, without ever sacrificing the recognisability of the subject. He rarely sought his motifs far from home: fields and snow-covered landscapes, the rear façades of terraced houses, guarded level crossings, views of the Scheldt and the port. He was also a well-regarded portraitist, who placed the sitter's character above mere likeness.

Hendrix studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (1927–1934). His early oeuvre was almost entirely lost in 1945 in a bombing; the work that survives dates largely from after the war. His paintings are held, among other places, by the Ministry of Finance in Brussels, and in numerous municipal and private collections at home and abroad.

Key facts

Training and early years

Pierre Hendrix was born in Antwerp on 3 April 1913, less than two years before the outbreak of the First World War. He counted himself among the "Lost Generation" — the children who grew up amid the disruption and poverty of the post-war years.

Already during his schooldays at the Sint-Henricusgesticht, his talent for drawing attracted attention, including that of his drawing teacher Samuel De Vriendt. His parents refused him a full-time art education; in their eyes, being an artist meant a life of poverty and uncertainty. Hendrix therefore attended evening classes at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (1927–1934), while earning a living during the day as a junior clerk. Despite this double burden, he was awarded a first- or second-prize diploma every year. His teachers included A. Van Beurden and, in the highest class, Julien Creytens, who would later become director of the Academy.

After the Academy, he did his military service at the Falcon Barracks in Antwerp, where he painted the walls of the mess hall with large decorative panels. He married Clothilde Verbeeck and settled in Edegem; the marriage produced six children. Several of them followed an artistic path, including the eldest daughter, stained-glass artist Ria Hendrix. Around 1937 he became a member of the Kultuurkring van Mortsel (Mortsel Cultural Circle), a lively company of artists and writers gathered around the writer Marie Gevers at Kasteel Mussenburg.

The rupture of 1945

On 1 March 1945, a V-2 strike destroyed the family's house in Edegem. They survived in the cellar, where they happened to be sitting at the table at the time, but the entire contents of the house were lost — and with them almost the entire body of work Hendrix had built up until then. The strike left him with a permanent disability.

This event forms a hinge point in his career. It explains why so little of his pre-war work survives, and why the surviving oeuvre largely dates from after 1945. Recurring motifs in that later work — transience, the preservation of what threatens to disappear — take on a particular weight against this background.

Rebuilding and mature years

After a brief period in Hainaut, the family returned to Antwerp and settled in Berchem (Pulhof). Hendrix started afresh, working extensively outdoors. He preferred to paint in the late afternoon and evening, to capture the atmosphere and mood of the light, and was most active in autumn and winter. Exuberant spring and summer scenes, vivid greens and harsh blues did not suit him.

Later he had a house with studio built on the Groenenborgerlaan in Wilrijk, where he would live for more than a quarter of a century. From his studio window he looked out over the then still rural area towards Edegem, with the basilica's dome visible in the distance.

Hendrix exhibited in a series of Antwerp venues, most of which have since disappeared, including the gallery De Eik run by painter Jan Monden. At the Ministry of Finance, where he worked, he founded the art circle T.A.K.A. (Tol en Accijnzen Kunstkring Antwerpen — Customs and Excise Art Circle Antwerp), of which he was the first chairman. Through that circle and beyond it, he showed his work not only in Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent, but also in Lille and Paris.

The work

Hendrix is best characterised as a landscape painter and portraitist. He never sought landscape far away: he found it in his immediate surroundings and observed it from his own home. He painted what remained, or what he remembered and wished to preserve. Two subjects recurred strikingly often: the rear façades of terraced houses and apartment blocks, and guarded level crossings with their rails, signal arms and blinking lights — motifs that, through composition and a sensitive handling of colour, he managed to raise above the everyday. He also painted still lifes, flower pieces, interiors and studio scenes, and the Scheldt with its port views and marine scenes.

His colour range grew lighter over the years, his brushwork more sketch-like. He shunned photographic precision; patches of colour, brushstrokes and delicate touches were, for him, means of creating an atmosphere. He remained faithful to figuration, which he himself described as a calculated risk with colour and line, without ever lapsing into aimless experimentation.

Portraits

As a portraitist, Hendrix enjoyed an established reputation. He sought to capture the inner life of his sitter — nature, character, personality — rather than a merely external likeness. Whether it concerned a commission or a free choice, such as the portraits of his own children, he worked with the same seriousness and dedication.

Among his well-known sitters are the novelist Jos Van Rooy, the poet Anton van Wilderode, the organist Jan Valach and the sculptor Albert De Smet. The portrait of his daughter Ria in a straw hat is also well known.

Later years

In 1983 Clothilde Verbeeck died, having supported him throughout his life as an artist and having continued to accompany him on his painting trips even after going blind. Her death led to a long creative silence. Hendrix broke it with a retrospective at Huis Hellemans in Edegem, on the occasion of his 75th birthday (1988). Five years later, for his eightieth, a second overview followed in the same house with more than sixty-five works — only a fraction of his output. The poet Anton van Wilderode, a close friend, wrote about his work on that occasion.

Pierre Hendrix died on 8 April 1995, five days after his eighty-second birthday, at the Middelheim Hospital in Antwerp.

Also a poet

Alongside his visual work, Hendrix also wrote poetry. A cycle of seven poems from 1947 attests to the same sensitivity to landscape, silence and transience that characterises his paintings.

Friendships and network

Hendrix moved within a wide network of artists and writers. The poet Anton van Wilderode introduced several of his exhibitions and wrote about his work. Among his close friends he counted the novelist Jos Van Rooy, secretary of the Kristelijk Vlaams Kunstenaarsverbond (Christian Flemish Artists' Association). The poet Remi De Cnodder and the writer René Turkry also wrote about his work. During his Mortsel years he belonged to the circle around Marie Gevers, with figures such as the poet Karel Vertommen, writer-publisher Anton Thiry and the sculptors Floris and Jan de Cuyper.