Frans Masereel (Blankenberge, Belgium, 1889 - Avignon, France, 1972).
This artist was one of the most important creators in the field of engraving. Outstanding pacifist, often treated social issues.
He was born into a bourgeois family in Ghent and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in that city. By 1910 he traveled to Paris where he discovered the art of engraving on wood. At the beginning of World War II, to avoid being mobilized, he settled in Geneva. There he began a relationship with pacifist intellectuals like Stefan Zweig and Romain Rolland, whose works illustrated, and collaborated in newspapers like La Feuille.
During the 20s and 30s was positioned clearly in favor of the Soviet Union and participated in numerous activities of pacifist and antifascist sign. After World War II he settled in Paris and in 1949 in Nice.
He published several novels without words, using only recorded: Mon Livre d'heures (1919), a fait divers (1920), Souvenirs de mon pays (1921). Among them stands La cité (1925).