S'appuyant sur le patrimoine du Mus e Juif de Belgique, mais aussi sur des oeuvres de la galerie anversoise Callewaert-Vanlangendonck, cette exposition sort de l ombre une figure incontournable, mais aujourd?hui tomb e dans l?oubli, de la peinture belge d?apr s-guerre. S'y r v le une ?uvre qui, saisissant pr cipit de l? volution d s l'histoire de l'art au 20e si cle, montre un chemin qui part de la figuration pour aboutir l'abstraction. Peintre, mailleur et illustrateur, Kurt Lewy (1898 ? 1963) est n Essen (Allemagne), o il enseigne les techniques graphiques la Folkwang Schule de 1929 1933. D s l?av nement du nazisme, cet artiste juif est destitu de ses fonctions. Deux ans plus tard, il fuit l?Allemagne hitl rienne pour s?installer Bruxelles. Incarc r comme sujet ennemi par les autorit s belges en mai 1940, Kurt Lewy est intern dans les camps de Saint-Cyprien et de Gurs. En 1942, il parvient s? vader et revient Bruxelles, o il se cache durant une vingtaine de mois. En juin 1944, il est arr t par les nazis, qui l?internent Malines jusqu? la Lib ration. Apr s la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Kurt Lewy renonce aux th mes figuratifs qui guidaient jusqu?alors sa production, marqu e ses d buts par l?expressionnisme allemand. Il se tourne vers l?abstraction, qu?il explorera jusqu? son d c s. Soucieuse d? liminer le superflu, l? ph m re, le chaotique , sa recherche g om trique le d gage des angoisses que lui avaient caus s le cauchemar de la guerre comme son isolement d? migr . ////*** Drawing on the heritage of the Jewish Museum of Belgium, but also on works from the Antwerp gallery Callewaert-Vanlangendonck, this exhibition brings out of the shadows an essential figure, but now forgotten, of Belgian painting post-war. A work is revealed which, a striking precipitate of evolution from the history of art in the 20th century, shows a path which starts from figuration and leads to abstraction. Painter, enameler and illustrator, Kurt Lewy (1898 ? 1963) was born in Essen (Germany), where he taught graphic techniques at the Folkwang Schule from 1929 to 1933. With the advent of Nazism, this Jewish artist was dismissed from his functions. Two years later, he fled Hitler's Germany to settle in Brussels. Incarcerated as an enemy subject by the Belgian authorities in May 1940, Kurt Lewy was interned in the Saint-Cyprien and Gurs camps. In 1942, he managed to escape and returned to Brussels, where he hid for around twenty months. In June 1944, he was arrested by the Nazis, who interned him in Mechelen until the Liberation. After the Second World War, Kurt Lewy renounced the figurative themes which had until then guided his production, marked in its beginnings by German expressionism. He turned to abstraction, which he explored until his death. Concerned with ?eliminating the superfluous, the ephemeral, the chaotic?, his geometric research frees him from the anxieties that the nightmare of war and his isolation as an emigrant had caused him.