Alfons Blomme - St. Mark's Basilica, Venice

This beautiful etching by Alfons Blomme depicts the interior of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. Through a striking perspective, the artist focuses on the area just in front of the presbytery. The diagonal framing allows us to see the famous "iconostasis," the balustrade surmounted by eight statues that, harking back to the traditional Byzantine rite, separates the presbytery from the rest of the church.

In his printmaking, artist Alfons Blomme draws on the vedutist tradition of etchings, which depicted famous monuments in a perfectly measurable perspective space. However, he reworks this tradition in his own way, introducing a distinctly contemporary sensibility into his execution. Indeed, the same hatching used in ancient etchings to capture the monument in every minute detail is employed by Blomme to create a vibrant execution of atmospheric and luminous effects. Thus, the subject, though constructed on clear, solid lines in a concrete measurement of space, is subjected to a certain synthesis that makes its representation more expressive. Alfons Blomme possesses an extraordinary technique that is expressed precisely in this mark, which simultaneously constructs and undoes forms, giving rise to a suggestive sense of elusiveness.

Alfons Blomme was a Belgian painter and printmaker from Roeselare, born in 1889 and died in 1979. He studied first in Roeselare and then in Brussels, where he came into contact with the most important modern movements. There he was also influenced by Emile Claus and later by Surrealism. After a trip to Italy, he was captivated by the light and sea in Venice. He finally settled in De Haan in 1930 and built a studio there. His extensive travels inspired him to paint countless landscapes, cityscapes, facades, and building interiors. He was director of the Ostend Academy between 1935 and 1940.

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