This exhibition at Saint-Gilles Town Hall explores the industrial landscapes of painter Pierre Paulus (Châtelet 1881-Saint-Gilles 1959). A selection of industrial landscapes, poetically translated by Paulus through shades of black and fire, is presented. They echo Saint-Gilles in the industrial age: the Van der Elst factories, the South Station, a rapidly expanding world and a society that believed in progress.
These factory landscapes, punctuated by furnaces now at a standstill, are the remains of a bygone industrial era and of what was the economic heart of our cities for more than a century. Saint-Gilles underwent the same transformations as the Pays Noir observed by Paulus. This historical and social heritage bears witness to Belgium’s industrial epic.