Moeder beweent haar dood kind / Mère pleurant son enfant mort

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As early as 1886, ‘Mother weeping over her dead child’ was a way out of realistic “documentary” typical of a Constantin Meunier in works like ‘Firedamp’. Suffering does not depend on events. It is at the heart of a human condition doomed to despair.
Existential anguish invades the work. It guides the work of the silhouette from the original block, which in parts swallows the woman’s head and in others rejects it in a tragic gesture of revolt.
This is not social research. It is part of a psychological vision which leads Minne to explore interior life through a small number of figures in an infinite variety of forms (from Michel Draguet, in 'Le Symbolisme en Belgique', Brussels, RMFAB, 2010, p. 253)
English Translation by Marianne Reynolds (2010)

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