Albert Willem

Albert Willem is a contemporary figurative artist who lives and works in Brussels. He is best known for his naive style paintings, rich in wit and humor, with a folkloric and infantile element in their composition. His subjects are generally light-hearted, deliberately avoiding deep themes, with touches of humor that are an integral part of Willem's practice. His works, usually painted with acrylics on canvas, often show ironic or larger-than-life moments from everyday life: people fighting at a wedding, dancing at a funeral, an endless conga line. He also uses humor to overcompensate for his physiological and emotional fears, past and present, including his very personal quirks like the panic he feels when confronted on a dance floor. Willem's paintings reflect part of his artistic lineage stretching back to the works of LS Lowry, James Ensor and Breugel the Elder, all artists he greatly admires. Building on Lowry's artistic sense of normalcy and primitivism, Willem brings a contemporary twist to this style by depicting everyday life, without judgment of right or wrong, in 21st century society. Willem lives and works in Alsemberg, Belgium, and has exhibited in recent years in Lenningen, Germany, Moscow and Antwerp.