Jan Frans De Boever

Jan Frans De Boever (1872 - 1949) was a Flemish Symbolist painter. He was very successful during most of his lifetime, and he considered himself as one of the best painters ever in his country. His megalomaniac character made him a solitary and isolated artist, whose work moved the last few decades to the U.S.A. where became a beloved artist. In about 1909 he modified his style radically, painting licentious women and prostitutes in morbid and bizarre settings. Skeletons, death and eroticism began to dominate his paintings. Semi-clothed women were depicted as servants of the devil, creating an atmosphere of evil. Man is shown as woman's toy, a languid object submitting himself to her slightest caprice. In 1914 he started to illustrate Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du mal" for the wealthy art-collector Speltinckx. Once he had discovered his own style, a form of Symbolism belonging to the decadent movement, he ignored ongoing artistic developments and drew his inspiration from literature, music and mythology. His paintings were very successful until 1935, when indirectly financial crisis struck. He reduced his prices in vain, but nevertheless continued to paint in the same fashion until his death in 1949.

Jaroslav Panuška

Jaroslav Panuška (1872 - 1958) was a Czech academic painter, mainly landscape painter,but he created a series of dark, gloomy and horror art, scary and fairytale motifs and horrible ghostly or zombie like creations, that seem to be suffering their condition.

Alén Diviš

Alén Diviš (1900 – 1956) was a Czech painter known for his melancholic art. Having spent much of his life abroad, often working in solitude, he remained rather unknown during his life but has had a postmortem revival in the art world. In his early 20s, Diviš became intensely focused on art, particularly with cubism. In the summer of 1926, he moved to Paris to devote himself fully to his art. In Paris, he attended lectures by František Kupka and explored cubism, expressionism, and classicism. In 1939, in reaction to the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Diviš became increasingly political and, with other expatriates, formed the House of Czechoslovak Culture. Upon France's entry into the Second World War, Diviš and other members of the organization were arrested and charged with espionage. The reason for the arrests is unclear; perhaps their "sympathies for communism" caused suspicion, or it may have been their uncommonly celebratory reaction to the outbreak of war (which they hoped would lead to the liberation of Czechoslovakia). Whatever the reason, Diviš would spend the next six months in La Santé Prison, one of France's toughest. The sombre mood and the inscriptions and graffiti on the cell walls would inspire his later artistic vision. The charges of espionage were dropped, but Diviš would spend another year and a half in concentration and internment camps in France, Morocco, and Martinique before his eventual release.

Jakub Schikaneder

Murder in the House, 1890

Jakub Schikaneder (1855-1924) was a Bohemian painter known for his soft paintings of the outdoors, often lonely in mood. His paintings often feature poor and outcast figures. Other motifs favoured by Schikaneder were autumn and winter, corners and alleyways in the city of Prague and the banks of the Vltava – often in the early evening light, or cloaked in mist. A dark gothic melancholy is the main feature of most of his work, representing people, especially women in difficult conditions, poverty, mourning, death, etc.

In the Morgue, 1885

All Soul's Day, 1888

Utonulá (1890-95)

Immersed in Thought (Lonely), 1890