Mig Quinet

Mig Quinet was born in Ransart the 3rd of June 1906. She trained in in plastic arts (drawing) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels and then taught herself painting. Mig met the musician René De Nobele who she married in 1931. They had a daughter but separated in 1935. Quinet became very enthusiastic about the movements in modern art of the 20s (7 Arts and Pure Belgian Plastic Arts). She mixed with Baugniet and danced at Akarova’s. She designed and created deco art furniture.
From 1936, Mig exhibited at the Manteau Gallery where critics praised the audacity of her palette. Her works were outstandingly original by virtue of a surreal vision of everyday subjects and by the sharp freshness of colours closer to the influences of James Ensor than the « animiste » palette so much in favour at the time. Quinet became founding member of the Young Belgian Painters group and participated in all their exhibitions in Belgium and abroad. From 1944 her works progressively orientated towards abstract art. Mig Quinet continued her experimentation towards an increasing abstractism mixing influences of analytic cubism and fauvism.
In 1947, present at the Stockholm exhibition, she was victim of a serious road accident which resulted in her disappearance from the artistic public scene. Her creativity, however, remained overflowing. She confirmed her engagement to abstract art and lived and conceived her art as a poetic evolution of reality. From 1953 – 1967, the Palace of Fine Arts in Brussels organised six important exhibitions of Mig Quinet’s works. Her art consisted progressively of new representational art tinted with metaphorical humour. Fascinated by the four elements, her canvasses were imprinted with a nervous movement and incandescent colours. Her palette was symbolic ally linked to earth, water, fire and wind in modern canvasses that show a great strength in plastic art. In 1988 a first retrospective of her works was exhibited at the Museum of Ixelles and the Museum of Louvain-La-Neuve. Mig Quinet died in Boitsfort in 2001.

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