Mariette Devocht (1909- 1999)
A Belgian Artist from the Flemish Kempen

Mariette (Jet) Devocht was born in a middle-class family in Turnhout (province of Antwerp, Belgium) on August 28, 1909 (Fig.1, portrait by her husband Leo Lewi ).

She received an art education, althoug she was not encouraged in this direction by her family. She persevered, however, and graduated from the Royal Academy and the Higher Institute of Fine Arts in Antwerp.

Apart from her artistic life, she was also a dedicated spouse, mother and grandmother, the roles of which she knew to combine with great inventiveness.

Isidore Opsomer, Professor of portrait painting at the Higher Institute in Antwerp, had exerted a great influence on a whole generation of art students, among whom Mariette Devocht who attended his courses between 1933 and 1936. Under his guidance she learned to love the landscape of the Flemish region in which she was brought up (the Kempen or Campines in the north of Belgium), and acquired a respect for the native and local traditions, meadows, farms and people of Flanders.
She left the Higher Institute in 1936 as an accomplished portraitist and engraver. In those years she produced several copper engravings that were exhibited in the region of Antwerp and Turnhout.

On March 10, 1937 Mariette married the talented and versatile artist Leo Lewi (1909-1976), and two years later the couple settled in Turnhout. This marriage produced five children and played a decisive role in the life of Mariette in many respects.
Together with her husband she shared several exhibitions of work, which was complementary and for which her native landscape of the Kempen served as a common source of inspiration (Fig.2, copper plate engraving).

The years of World War II (1939-1945) brought many hardships for Leo Lewi who was of Jewish origin and had converted to Catholicism in 1936. Leo Lewi had to hide from the Nazi persecution and this put a severe burden on the young family. Despite this, Mariette was still able to exhibit her work in Antwerp during these years. After the war, Mariette and Leo tried to resume their careers, but their artistic life was seriously disturbed and many opportunities had passed them by. The artistic mind and aspiration of Leo Lewi had suffered considerably and Mariette had lost some of the poetic idealism of her student years, although her dedication to art remained unchanged.

The advent of modernism in the postwar era (1945-1950) presented a challenge to the animistic art of the couple. But Mariette and Leo remained unaffected by the progressive movements and remained faithful to their initial orientation. Commissioned works, however, were much needed to support the household, but they were not plenty.

Mariette progressively shifted her artistic work from engraving to watercolor, pastel and oil painting (Fig.3, pastel drawing of her daughter Wenefrida Lewi). From 1949 she became an art teacher in high schools in Turnhout and neighboring towns (Oostmalle, Mol and Beerse). To share her artistic experience and mastership with successive generations of students became an important purpose in her life.

The preparation of her courses and the care for her family left only little time for Mariette’s own artistic life. Nevertheless, she kept painting portraits, still-lifes and landscapes. She had surrendered herself to the scenery of her youth, which she continued to paint with authenticity and nostalgia, with simple line strokes and a sober color palette. With pleasure she lingered in the natural park “De Liereman” in the nearby Oud-Turnhout and in the meadows around Mol. She had fallen in love with the open spaces of the Kempen, its poppies, heather, farms and windmills. The affection for the people that worked and lived there was the basis of her lifelong inspiration.

Mariette liked to work with live models. She also tried to catch the interplay of dark and light with rapidly executed sketches of faces, flowers and clouds. She was particularly attracted by feminine subjects: the freshness of young girls, the fragility of delicate flowers, such as roses, poppies and cornflowers (Fig.4, water color painting). She attempted to retain a memory of the volatile forces of life by means of lines and colors. The poetic silence and the serenity of the landscapes of the Kempen, with their low horizons and tiny houses against an immense sky, reminded her of her younger years. She felt at home in this world, which gave her the force to continue and to face hardship and adversity in difficult times.

Her portraits reflect her desire for the expression of character, internal tension and force of mind.

She retired as an art teacher in 1973; her husband died in October 1976. She still held a comprehensive exhibition in Mol in 1983. A commemorative exhibition was dedicated to her 60-years long artistic career in Mol in 1990. She continued to paint and draw until the end of her life. She died in 1999 at the age of 90, surrounded by caring family, quietly and without complaint, as she had been all her life.

Only in her art could she express herself: delicate and responsive at the same time.