ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Charles Swyncop was a Belgian painter, designer and print maker, born in Brussels in 1895. He studied first under his elder brother, Philippe (who was 17 years older than Charles), and who was an engraver, a graphic artist, and decorative painter. Like his brother, Charles then moved to the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers were Jean Delville, Herman Richer and Alfred Bastien, and where he won third place in the Prix de Rome of 1920.
After studying in Rome he joined some of his fellow students in Brussels, to work under their teacher Bastien, on the vast Panorama of the Battle of Yser. Bastien had worked as an unofficial war artist since 1915.
In the 1920s, Swyncop traveled to Venice and Spain, where he produced work in various genres – portraits, figure paintings, still lifes, landscapes and marines. Again with Alfred Bastien, and other artists such as Jules Brouwers, Swycop joined the group La Lierre, exhibiting with them at the Toison d'Or in Brussels. He also took part in a group exhibition at the Maison d'Art Moderne in Brussels in 1920.
In 1930 he was commissioned by the Belgian State to paint decorative panels for a pavilion at the Exposition Universelle of 1930 in Antwerp.
He exhibited at various salons, including the 1933 and 1937 Salons at Ghent. In 1938 he became a teacher at the Academy of Fine Art in Ixelles, where he remained until his death in 1970; his pupils include Isi Koslowitz, Charles Delaite and Doris Kiesewetter.
In 1963 he illustrated the cover of the catalogue for the exhibition "100 Years of Art in Ixelles."