Belgian artist Gisbert Combaz (1869-1941) served as a catalyst for change in the art world and the postcard industry. During his career, Gisbert created posters, postcards, oil paintings, ceramic tiles, furniture, and decorative friezes. As an artist and designer, he created iconic anti-war propaganda posters. Finally, as an art critic and professor, Combaz became a leading proponent of the art nouveau movement. Generations of art students were inspired by Professor Combaz’s teachings and the “monumental simplicity” of his art. Even after Gisbert Combaz’s death, his postcards were still so visually powerful that they influenced the psychedelic art of the 1960s.
Combaz was born in Antwerp, a city with a rich artistic heritage. He probably learned to draw from his father, an architectural draughtsman, author, and engineering professor. When Gisbert was still quite small, the Combaz family moved from Antwerp to Brussels, where he lived for the rest of his life. His parents wanted him to become a barrister. But Gisbert wanted to be an artist. In 1891, following his parents' wishes, Combaz obtained a law degree. At first, he pursued the artistic and legal professions simultaneously. But in 1893, Gisbert chose to follow his heart rather than obey his parents. He left the law profession and entered art school. Combaz’s earliest surviving sketches date from 1889 when he visited ancient ruins in France and Spain.
That same year, a Brussels art dealer held an exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints. It is likely that Gisbert attended this exhibition. Brussels’ yen for “Japonisme” was described as “an epidemic sweeping the city.” By the 1890s, the influence of Japanese art was evident in Gisbert Combaz’s art. His work focused on the bold use of line, wide swaths of color,
unusual perspectives, patterns, and a flat picture plane -many of which are hallmarks of Japanese woodblock prints.
By this time, Brussels had become the “uncrowned capital of Art Nouveau.” Gisbert Combaz was destined to become one of its guiding lights. His first published sketch appeared in the 1894 edition of Palais Noel, a Christmas album for the Jeune Barreau (Young Bar Association). It seems incredible today, but many of Brussels’ barristers and solicitors were also artists and activists. The Jeune Barreau brought proponents of social justice and political activism together in the Palais de Justice, Belgium’s most important courthouse. Beginning in 1891, the Palais de Justice hosted art exhibitions featuring works by Belgium’s leading avant-garde artists. Combas became a regular contributor, designing exhibition posters for the Jeune Barreau.
The young Belgian studied at Brussels’ Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts from 1893 to 1894. Afterward, Gisbert submitted five applications for various teaching jobs at his alma mater. He was repeatedly rejected because his penchant for Art Nouveau was “apparently too radical for academic tastes.” In 1912, when Combaz’s work was finally “held to be purged of his earlier absolute devotion to art nouveau,” he became a professor at the Academie des Beaux-Artes.
The art nouveau period overlapped the golden age of postcards from the 1880s to World War I. New developments in industrial technology were changing the world. Advancements in printing technology benefitted the postcard industry. But at the same time, industrialization depersonalized the decorative arts. Artists and designers like Gisbert Combaz found the late Victorian world of mass-produced art objects such as furniture and ceramics disempowering and distasteful. At the same time, they found the rigidity of the art establishment to be too restrictive. A counter-culture movement grew out of young artists’ desire to challenge late Victorian artistic and cultural norms. The result was Art Nouveau. Gisbert Combaz’s dedication to the Art Nouveau movement was apparent in his roles as professor, art critic, and graphic artist.
1894 marked the start of Gisberts’ career in graphic arts. He designed the first exhibition poster for La Libre Esthetique, an artistic society in Brussels specializing in annual exhibitions for artists whose work did not fit in within orthodox Victorian taste. Combaz’s poster, the first of many for La Libre Esthetique, was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Some of the details in these posters served as models for Combaz’s later postcards.
In both posters and postcards, Gisbert perfected the principle of “less is more.” He used only a few colors applied in broad swaths, simplified figures, and emphasized them with double outlines as if they were stained glass. The result was electrifying- his figures stood out from the background and leaped off the page. This unique style made his work immediately recognizable. But the German occupation of Belgium during WWI would drastically change Gisbert’s artistic style.
During the Great War, Brussels was not as hard hit as other areas of Belgium. Therefore, Gisbert was able to continue teaching art history and exhibiting his work. But when the Germans invaded Belgium in 1914, Combaz’s style changed from bright and colorful to dark and brooding. It is obvious from Gisbert’s art that he was profoundly affected by the German occupation of Brussels.
In July 1915, Combaz became a contributor to La Libre Belgique, an anti-war newspaper, when they published his lithograph “Jusque au bout!” It shows the German eagle being strangled by human hands. To escape detection, the underground newspaper maintained a secret office. Each time the Germans discovered the office and punished the staff, they moved to another location. The Germans suspected that Gisbert was involved with this clandestine resistance movement, but they couldn’t prove it. So they just warned him to stop participating in anti-war activism. Fortunately for us, he didn’t listen.
Gisbert’s second anti-war lithograph, “Louvain,” created in 1916, recorded the first of many events now known as “the German atrocities.” It depicts the city of Leuven and its 14th-century university library in flames, the citizens fleeing in terror. Today, Gisbert’s anti-German lithographs are considered some of the world’s greatest anti-war posters. Incredibly, it seems that none of them were published in postcard form.
After the armistice, the Great War continued to influence Gisbert’s works. Most significantly, Combaz created a series of religious paintings based on the Beatitudes. This section of the Bible reads in part: “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted…. Blessed are the peacemakers…Blessed are those who are persecuted…because great is your reward in heaven.” Gisbert’s paintings illustrating these words were probably intended to comfort himself as well as the citizens of Belgium as they processed wartime trauma. He kept busy writing books and teaching courses at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels until his retirement at age seventy.
As a professor and art critic, Combaz was a guiding light for Art Nouveau. This movement spawned a counter-culture of young artists who attempted to abolish the snobbish distinction between fine art and the “lesser” decorative arts. Gisbert Combaz published nine art history books and numerous articles promoting art nouveau principles. Gisbert encouraged his students to do more than produce paintings that hung “uselessly” on the walls of rich patrons’ mansions. Combaz and his avant-garde compatriots focused on creating beautiful
objects that, when used, improved people’s daily lives. By “democratizing” art, avant-garde artists like Gisbert Combaz became emissaries of social reform.
Postcards, with their role in enhancing communication, were also part of this movement toward utilitarian art. In 1897, Belgium published its first picture postcards to promote the Brussels Universal Exposition. That same year Dietrich & Company, a Brussels art publisher, commissioned four of Belgium’s leading artists to produce its first postcards: Henri Cassiers, Gisbert Combaz, Henri Meunier, and Victor Mignot. This strategy rocketed Deitrich to the forefront of Belgium’s postcard publishing industry. Their success was largely due to Gisbert Combaz’s postcards, which were radically different. They repeatedly received glowing reviews from critics in fine art magazines and stationery industry publications. Gisbert’s cards were so popular that they were still included in Deitrich’s catalog a decade after their first appearance.
Gisbert’s postcards were unique. His first two series, “Les Elements” and “La Mer” appeared in 1898. The final postcard series, titled “Les Devises,” was published in 1900. Each packet contained 12 postcards. Those in the final series lack the space on the front for messages, which is included in the first two sets. Combaz treated each of the thirty-six images like diminutive posters. His colorful style was ideally suited for the new artistic medium of postcards.
Gisbert Combaz’s designs single-handedly changed the fledgling postcard industry. Most postcards were promotional tools for tourism. But Gisbert’s cards were simply useful miniature art objects. They were some of the first “art postcards.” Combaz’s brightly colored cards, with their ground-breaking designs, stood out dramatically amongst the scenic views in postcard shops. They sold spectacularly well in Belgium, Italy, and England.
Instead of depicting tourism spots or rural landscapes, Gisbert Combaz focused on the forces of nature affecting these environments. In the first series, “Les Elements”, the twelve postcards are split into four groups personifying the “alchemical elements” of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. Many of these images from 1898 foreshadow the development of psychedelic art in the 1960s.
Eighty years after his postcards first appeared, Gisbert Combaz’s art nouveau style influenced the psychedelic art movement. Like Art Nouveau, the psychedelic art movement also centered around a counter-culture of young artists rebelling against societal norms. Echoes of Gisbert’s postcards are found in the work of Peter Max (b. 1937) and Milton Glaser (1929-2020), leaders of the 1960s psychedelic art movement.
Gisbert Combaz’s posters and postcards influenced artists for over a century. Oddly enough, no solo exhibitions or articles profiling his work appeared during his lifetime. Ironically, Brussels’ greatest proponent of Art Nouveau died in 1941, when the Germans invaded Belgium for a second time. Gisbert did not live to see the atrocities of WWII or the revival of interest in his work during the 1960s. But fifty-five years after his death, a solo exhibition of Gisbert Combaz’ posters and postcards was held at Brussels’ Bibliotheque Royale. It was accompanied by the first published study of his work. The exhibition resulted in a revival of interest in Combaz’s artistic career. Time will tell whether or not a new generation of artists will be influenced by Gisbert’s postcards in the twenty-first century.
