Georges Carrey (Paris, 1902 – Knokke, Belgium, 1953) was a French-born painter, gouachist, and designer who became an important figure within the Belgian abstract art movement. Although he died relatively young, Carrey played a pioneering role in the development of postwar abstraction in Belgium, evolving from figurative painting toward a highly personal form of geometric and gestural abstraction.
Carrey moved to Belgium in 1922 and initially worked as an advertising designer and illustrator, producing caricatures, posters, and theater sets. Around the same period, he began painting, focusing primarily on portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. For more than two decades, his work remained rooted in figurative traditions while he continuously experimented with composition, color, and form. He married in 1941.
After years of artistic research and experimentation, Carrey fully embraced abstraction in 1946. In 1947, he briefly returned to Paris and attended the School of Decorative Arts. A year later, he studied with the influential artist André Lhote, where he met the French painter Nicolas de Staël, with whom he developed a close friendship. De Staël’s influence can be seen in Carrey’s richly textured surfaces and his use of the palette knife to build compositions through sensitive, colorful, rectangular touches of paint.
By 1951, inspired by the mosaics of Ravenna, Carrey began arranging his compositions into more structured geometric formats. His paintings from this period balance materiality and order, combining gestural application with carefully organized abstract forms. Art historian Philippe Roberts-Jones described his work as consisting of “sensitive and colorful touches, juxtaposed with each other, rich in material and often rectangular,” noting the technical affinity with Nicolas de Staël.
In 1952, Carrey became a member of the influential Belgian group Art Abstrait, founded by Jo Delahaut and Jean Milo, alongside artists such as Pol Bury, Georges Collignon, Léopold Plomteux, Jan Saverys, and Jan Burssens. That same year, he participated in the Salon d’Octobre, founded by critic Charles Estienne.
Carrey died suddenly of a heart attack on August 26, 1953, in Knokke, Belgium, at the age of 51, while preparing an exhibition for the Ariel Gallery in Paris.
Shortly before his death, Carrey articulated his vision of abstraction in a statement that has since become closely associated with his artistic philosophy:
“When we no longer seek to recognize in a painting an apple, a pear or a naked woman, we will also be able to do without the word: abstract… All that will remain is the paint.”
Today, works by Georges Carrey are held in important public collections, including the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and the Museum of Abstract Art.
