the man
François Piers, was born in Ostend (Belgium, Flanders) in 1950, the son of a chemist in the old centre of the city, near the fishermen’s quarter.
He gets a degree in law, economic and financial law as well a MBA, and, as an artist, he trains in the Academy of Fine Arts in Ostend where he attends the courses of drawing, sculpture and painting. Active in the family business of distribution of pharmaceutical products until it was sold to a German group, he then becomes a judge of the Commercial Court of the same city and Vice President of the Belgian Insurance and mobility group Touring. He has been honorary consul of Tunisia in Western Flanders for 25 years
the painter
François Piers is an intuitive and quick artist who finds his ideal medium in the watercolour by which he gives the viewer a tasteful and bright interpretation of the real: with just a few strokes of a vivid chromatic range often at the limits of fauve sensitivity, the Belgian painter interprets human reality and nature in line with the parameters of a figurative expressionism on the one hand tinged with a light neo-romantic sigh and on the other a joyful and luminous sense of the flow of life. He pins these situations and attitudes down on the paper in a witty and amiable way distant from the pervasive anguish of Nordic expressionism in favour of a light and a propensity closer to the expressionism of Mediterranean, French and Italian origin. Marianna Accerboni
JEUDART
Pursuing his painterly training he joins the group of the Jeudart (from jeudi d’art, Thursday of art), where
he learns the watercolour technique. With the members of this group he travels a lot in order to draw
inspiration for his works.
He goes to Tuscany, Côte d'Azur, the Somme Bay (in the north of France), on
the barges in Paris, Muggia (Trieste), and paints plein air, following the habit started in France in the
second half of the 19th century by the Impressionists, who wanted to capture natural light and infuse their
paintings with it.
LES BROLISTES
On his wanderings together with his artist colleagues, he meets an old friend living in Holland in
Retranchement, a small village close to the Belgian border, and founder of an artist group.
There
François discovers new techniques and themes. The members of the group use to meet in a junk dealer's shed
and, as in Dutch the junk objects are called brol, they soon adopt the name Brolistes.
LE COQART
Every now and then they also go to paint at the Pierses' in the hinterland of the Belgian coastal village De
Haan-Le Coq: also other local artists are invited to join the group and so the group of the Coqart is
founded.
For his later work he draws growing inspiration from his frequent journeys to Tunisia.
Texte de MARIANNA ACCERBONI, curateur, pour l’exposition à TRIESTE (ITALIE) le 16 mai 2015
François Piers. Artist affections and predilections winking at Cesare Dell'Acqua
Setting up an exhibition of watercolours in Piran can be a good opportunity to address a deferential thought
to the artist who was born there and achieved levels of excellence in this difficult technique: Cesare
Dell'Acqua (1821- Brussels 1905). The internationally renowned painter was also a co-founder of the
prestigious Société belge des aquarellistes which attracted many artists from various European
countries.
And it is precisely a Belgian watercolourist, François Piers, who has been invited to present his works by
virtually recalling the figure of Dell'Acqua with some of them, and moreover submitting himself to a
particularly demanding exhibition formula almost dotting various rooms of a museum, the birthplace of the
famous violinist-composer Giuseppe Tartini.
Initially very perplexed and not inclined to such an experience, François Piers finally accepted the challenge
after an enlightening visit to the recently renovated Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp which in some rooms has
adopted a new exhibition formula by combining ancient and modern works.
About 130 years separate the two painters who are the expression of two different eras and therefore bearers
of different visions. The combination can therefore appear bold and unrealistic. However, regardless of the
historical and technical approach, it is possible to identify common points of the respective sensitivities by
thinking back to some well-known predilections of Cesare Dell'Acqua.
And so it is that among the various
works
exhibited by François Piers there are some that are linked to themes dear to the Piran artist treated in a
modern key, such as family affections, exoticism/orientalism, the passion for Venice, the love of animals, not
disassociated from some humour. Dell'Acqua was also a lover of the North Sea and regularly visited the Belgian
coast during the summer holidays, even recording the swims in his sketchbooks and notes.
The watercolors on display are limited in number, especially to respect the atmosphere of the historic rooms of Casa Tartini, and therefore offer an incomplete view of the multifaceted inspiration of François Piers. Nonetheless they are enough to perceive his talents which, through an often nervous brushstroke, instead convey, with diffused elegance, a feeling of serenity flooded with light and joie de vivre. F.T.
François Piers (Ostend 1950), multi-graduated in law, economics and finance, found a way to train also artistically at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ostend. Company director, he was also vice president of the Touring Club Royal de Belgique insurance company. This year ends his 30-year career as a judge at the Ostend commercial court. He has been honorary consul of Tunisia in West Flanders for 33 years. He exhibited in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Tunisia.
