Marcel-Louis Baugniet collection

Marcel-Louis Baugniet was a Belgian painter, graphic artist, stage designer, and furniture designer. He was also one of the principal promoters of the Constructivist style and after his return from Paris in 1922, with the work of the French and Russian avant-garde fresh in his mind, he was determined to rouse Belgium from its artistic torpor and create a new utopian world of functional, elegant and rational form. When the Constructivists fell out of favor with the critics and the public he turned his attention to interiors and furniture design, and only at the end of his life were his earlier Constructivist paintings rediscovered, exhibited, and celebrated. His early career was heavily influenced by his companion and wife of six years, the avant-garde dancer Akarova (Marguerite Acarin). For her, he produced costumes and stage designs, and inspired by her he created his finest work of graphic art: the series of woodcuts entitled Kaloprosopies. One of his early projects on his return to Belgium was to reform the backward and undistinguished tradition of Belgian advertising and graphic arts. To that end, in 1922 he founded the advertising firm Fulgura, whose style was heavily influenced by contemporary Dutch and Russian posters with their bold and simple lines.