Otherworldly Journeys-The Fantastical Worlds of Bosch & Bruegel

The art of Bosch and Bruegel is full of imagination and fantasy. At a time when other artists adhered to tradition, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel were constantly developing novel subject matter and inventing new imagery. Satire and mockery alternated with extraordinary visions of heaven and hell, whether portraying boisterous peasants or saints being tormented by malevolent beasts.

Bosch was not a graphic artist himself, but his fantastic images of monsters and demons quickly found their way into prints. Fifty years after his death, there was a resurgence of interest in Bosch’s work. With most of his paintings in private collections, industrious publishers met the enthusiastic demand for Boschian imagery by commissioning printmakers to design artworks inspired by Bosch, often populated with whole armies of monsters, devils, and strange creatures. Peter Bruegel matched his predecessor’s imagination, and early in his career, he imitated Bosch’s style and subject matter so well that he became known as the Second Bosch. Bruegel was equally inventive, however, and soon grew beyond mere imitator of Bosch to distinguish himself as a leading artist of landscapes and innovative genre subjects.

Featuring nearly 90 original engravings and etchings, Otherworldly Journeys: The Fantastical Worlds of Bosch and Bruegel celebrates the inspired pictorial world of Bosch and Bruegel in all its facets. The exhibition is organized and generously loaned by the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and locally curated by Kim Spence, curator of works on paper.