Maison de la Francité

Bert Mertens  Figurative/Transfigurative representations of the city

Opening: Tuesday, April 14 2026, starting at 6 p.m.

At 7 p.m., Laurence Vielle wil perform a poem she created for Bert Mertens' work.

Exhibition open from Tuesday, April 14 to Monday, May 25, 2026.

Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., except weekends and holidays. 

Free admission.

Bert Mertens

Recipient of the 2024 Jos Albert Prize from the Royal Academy of Belgium, Bert Mertens, through his masterful realism executed with breathtaking technical skill, imbues everything he paints with a stunning sense of presence. A vitality emanates from his work, which never seeks to be sensational but instead invites us to discover, within the most ordinary appearances, a complexity, brillance, tenderness, or humor that has gone unnoticed.

Website of the exhibition: 

https://maisondelafrancite.be/?s=OOOO&p=580

The Brussels painter Bert Mertens is the city's confidant, depicting, reconfiguring, disfiguring, and transforming it through his meticulous realistic and constantly questioning art.He roams the urban landscape with a watchful eye, attentive to its signs and the strange lines it traces, which sometimes border on abstraction. He captures striking coincidences, dazzling reflections, chromatic rhythms, fractures, and vibrant textures that bear the silent mark of the man and women who shape the city's body and give it its soul. He tracks its beauty within its banality. Under his brush, the density of lived experience suddenly becomes palpable.