For its first participation in BRAFA, Virginie Devillez Fine Art presents a carefully curated selection of works reflecting its deep expertise in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century avant-gardes.

The founding currents of modernity emerge with Symbolism, through figures such as Xavier Mellery, Fernand Khnopff, and Léon Spilliaert. Their introspective and solitary works are shown alongside one of the final still lifes by Rik Wouters, the Fauvist artist whose promising career was tragically cut short in his youth. This late painting is paired with a pastel alive with vitality and joy, depicting his lifelong companion, Nel.

The theme of the woman as model and muse is further explored through a group of works on paper by Amedeo Modigliani from the prestigious collection of his principal patron, Dr Paul Alexandre. These nudes, revealing subtle Cubist echoes, are presented alongside a major early canvas by Paul Delvaux, influenced by Expressionism, created shortly before his turn toward Surrealism. A monumental female portrait further reveals the course his work would later take under the influence of Giorgio de Chirico and René Magritte.

From the latter, Virginie Devillez Fine Art has selected a gouache from the so-called “Période vache”, an iconoclastic tendency that continues to inspire the contemporary art scene. The selection concludes with rare and pioneering paintings by Pierre-Louis Flouquet and Victor Servranckx, evoking a period when Belgium’s artistic avant-garde of the 1920s was engaged in close dialogue with the Bauhaus and De Stijl.
These artists created works at the cutting edge of modernity, profoundly shaping their era and generation. Virginie Devillez Fine Art aims to highlight the enduring contemporaneity of these so-called historical pieces through a current approach to their presentation — both linear and refined.