Fierens, Paul

Biography

Paul Fierens, born in Paris in 1895 of Belgian parents, was a writer, art historian, museum curator, and poet. His grandfather was the composer August Gevaert. The family returned to Belgium when Fierens was a young boy, and he attended high school at the Collège Saint-Michel in Brussels. He studied in the same city at the Institut St. Louis and at the Free University, where in 1921 he completed his studies with a doctorate in law. He returned that year to Paris, and joined the editorial staff of the Journal des Débats, where his father, Hippolyte Fierens-Gevaert also began his career. When his father died in 1926, Fierens succeeded him as Professor of Aesthetics at Liège University, where he also started teaching the history of modern art. He continued to live in Paris, however, until 1934. Fierens was appointed Curator of the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1945, and two years later succeeded Leo van Puyvelde as Chief Curator, a post also previously held by his father. Fierens regularly published articles and studies on modern and contemporary art, including a series of monographs on painters and sculptors, and he was also interested in Flemish and Dutch old masters. He died in 1957 at the age of 62.

Bibliography

1957

Obituary, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 49 (May 1957):supplement p. 16

1957

Obituary, The Burlington Magazine 99 (July 1957):241

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