Born in 1882, Rik Wouters settled at 20 in Boitsfort, a suburb of Brussels where he started to carve wood. He first worked as a sculptor and produced busts and statues between 1907 and 1913. Much influenced by Edgar Degas and Bourdelle, he worked at the Academy of Malines and studied sculpture until the age of 28 with Charles van der Stappen.
Wouters befriended in 1909 Simon Levy, a French painter who made him discover many aspects of contemporary art. Under contract with Georges Giroux, an art dealer, he produced a sculpture representing the latters wife and other works for which his own wife served as model.
Wouters made many researches concerning volume and movement notably when he produced The Mad Virgin in 1912, inspired by Isdora Duncan, the famous ballerina.
He started to produce paintings in 1904 and decided to give up sculpture in 1912 after discovering the works of James Ensor and those of Czanne and Renoir during a trip to Paris.
Much impressed by Czannes sense of construction in space Wouters was also inspired by the colourful representations in the works of Ensor and Renoir.
He then produced some important paintings such as Woman ironing of 1912, which can be compared to one of Bonnards best works while Anniversary flowers had the true quality of a painting by Matisse.
Wouters expressed spontaneous gaiety centering on female subjects and was considered as a Belgian Fauve artist.
Drafted in the Belgian army at the outbreak of the First World War, he was sent to a base in Zeist where doctors discovered that he was suffering from a serious brain disease. He died at 34 after a last chance surgical operation.
Wouters career as a painter only lasted two years and it seemed certain that the world of art lost a great talented artist. He had taken part in various exhibitions, notably in Amsterdam. As a sculptor Wouters produced a bust of Ensor. The city of Malines organised a retrospective exhibition of his works, 23 sculptures and 44 paintings, watercolours, drawings and engravings, in 1946.
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