Raphael Gorsen - "Shadow of Sorrow"

Rafael Gorsen became known primarily as a religious artist, and one of his works hangs in the Vatican. However, his religious art arose from compassion and not from the need to show a pious conviction or to illustrate biblical scenes. Whatever one may think of Christianity, the scourged man, the head crowned with thorns, the innocent Christ nailed to the cross and dead, is considered by many to be an archetype. GORSEN depicted suffering in the figure of Christ, in series that left their mark on people's thoughts, because it was human suffering to which he referred for a long time.
But this sacred art was deliberately abandoned by the artist, who laconically claims that he no longer needed it. In reality, the great emotional pressure under which the painter had to work led to this definitive break. The end of the great series of religious art proved to be an important step in purely artistic terms; from that moment on, the contemporary Belgian artist took new paths. The fact is that he shows a preference for large formats. Raphael GORSEN rarely (or never) paints very small works, usually very large ones. This choice of format is a fundamental right that the contemporary Belgian painter claims.