CollectionThe Good, The Bad

Charles Menge was highly sensitive, even though his outward appearance gave the impression of a self-confident man with a strong personality, not easily swayed in his values and beliefs, which he did not hesitate to express loudly and clearly. This way of being was a shell that hid a being tortured by the search for the meaning of life on this Earth and in the hoped-for Beyond.
Charles Menge was born in 1920, at the end of the First World War in a bruised world still marked by the scars of the conflict. He witnessed the Second World War, during which tens of millions of human beings were killed by the madness of bloodthirsty tyrants. Then he witnessed the rise and fall of communism, a system in which human beings are reduced to the status of objects at the service of an organization. At the heart of the functioning of the totalitarian systems that spread during the 20th century and before, the personality, the individuality of human beings, their individual and spiritual richness had no place. His sensitivity to the human condition made him abhor these events and systems that represented the defining realities of the 20th century.
The artist constantly depicted these realities in a dramatic and violent manner in a series of paintings presented in this section. He had a deep faith throughout his life and never lost the belief and hope that there was a reality beyond this earthly life, which for many of us was synonymous with suffering and hell. This dichotomy between good and evil, black and white, this world and the next, suffering and joy, strongly influenced his thinking and his creativity.