Fred Bogaerts artwork • watercolour • drawing • for sale Street artists by the Sint-Margaritachurch in Lier

Alfred ‘Fred’ Bogaerts was a Flemish painter who only started drawing and painting at a later age. As a socially engaged man, he was active in the Flemish activist movement during the First World War. In November 1918, he fled to the Netherlands, together with his wife and the author-poet Felix Timmermans. Timmermans introduced him to the upper classes and Bogaerts soon became familiar with the typical Dutch atmosphere and customs. In the meantime, he had started drawing in earnest, a gift that he would develop and perfect autodidactically. Homesickness for his native region, De Lier, was his great driving force. His friend Timmermans said about this: ‘Without his journey to Holland, without this homesickness for his city and country, he would certainly never have started painting’. Bogaerts made nostalgic prints in pencil and pastel for De Haagsche Post, De Groene Amsterdammer and other publications. With his work, Bogaerts gave a humorous-realistic view of people, especially the socially disadvantaged. Although with a caricatural undertone, but always marked by the tragedy of war. After the 'extinction law' of 1929 he returned to Belgium and lived there from his drawing and painting.