It doesn't happen every day: coming into contact with the work of an artist, painter, watercolourist and draughtsman who was born in another country (Belgium) and whose passions, observations and obsessions are so close to my own. The artist's name is Jan Vanriet and he was born in Antwerp in 1948. So what, the reader might say, because is there anything more banal and — let's be honest — more comfortable than being born at a safe distance from war and occupation, west of the Great Border, in the city of diamonds? Better, in any case, than being born in Lviv or Warsaw. Yes, but Vanriet's parents were both active in the Belgian resistance movement and were both imprisoned in concentration camps. This child already had a heavy burden to bear when he came into this world. And this was not just any ordinary home. When Jan was born, a task was already waiting for him; he could go into the diamond trade, even though he could have passed up that task and done something completely different.

In addition, the very young Vanriet, searching for his artistic path, visited Prague in 1965 and met a much older graphic artist and painter: Pravoslav Sovak, who later emigrated to Switzerland after the invasion by the Warsaw Pact countries. Sovak became the young Belgian's mentor and they were united by a friendship that continues to this day. That friendship is one of the most important things in his life, according to Vanriet.

It is not every day that an artist born in the West finds inspiration in this so-called “second Europe”, and not in a random and superficial way, but in a way that has permanently characterised his aesthetics.

Jan Vanriet's works surprised me — I got to know him on the occasion of an exhibition of his work organised in Gdańsk in 2015 (it is also significant that the exhibition took place there, in a city that probably best senses the political pulse of the present, not only in Poland but also in Europe). I had not previously encountered this style of painting, which combines refined formalism with themes that are close to my heart, namely those of a “mutilated Europe”. Jan Vanriet — at least as I see it — professes the aesthetics of the whole. I will tell you what I mean by that in a moment, but first a remark: this painter (and illustrator) is fascinated by the figurative, the world, visible reality. There is no abstraction here, there are people and objects. It is difficult to find a more “representational” style of painting. History cannot be painted, but there are methods that enable us to fix certain traces of barbarism (a barbarism that is now over, but which unfortunately still exists in various parts of Europe, including in our beautiful country).

Vanriet wants to record, or perhaps simply indicate, what is the wound of the twentieth century in almost all countries of our small continent: the wound of war (or wars), Nazism, the Holocaust, although – as in the series Contract, for example – in the portrait of his parents embracing each other, he prefers not to consider the cruelty itself (which he did not experience himself), but rather the human reaction to it, the negative aspect of evil. But he does not ignore what is not historical either; he does not overlook the beauty of this world, its velvety skin, nor does he forget the trees and flowers, innocent fruits, apples and figs.

He has a certain affinity with another Belgian artist, ten years his junior – Luc Tuymans, a painter and sculptor with a similar family history (his mother was also involved in the resistance movement). Tuymans draws abundantly and inventively from those memories – from other people's memories. That is what almost our entire generation does, that is to say: those who were born later, with W.G. Sebald as a very prominent representative, but also many others.

This is a privileged generation, especially because it was confronted with the incredible crime of the Holocaust and totalitarian society, but at the same time a crime that was already over. Still close, but nevertheless closed. The privilege of this generation rests on the fact that the meaning of the world was, so to speak, filled in negatively, that a moral impulse would show this generation a clear path; feelings of mourning became mixed with a sense of righteousness, which helped to prevent them from succumbing to despair. Thinkers such as Wittgenstein allowed them to remain free from despair. Evil, which is now far away, does not paralyse the mind, but paradoxically becomes a signpost.

At Vanriet, the return to war themes – with the famous, recurring motif of the artist's parents entangled in a slightly awkward, somewhat conventional embrace (based on family photographs) – does not cover his entire oeuvre; it is more of an important phase in his work than an absolute dominant theme. It is interesting, however, that – in combination with paintings or watercolours that deal with themes from the horror years – the other motifs, which are derived from our much easier everyday existence, such as portraits or numerous still lifes, also radiate the necessary seriousness.

With Vanriet, you also sense a desire to simplify the image – a slight nod to pop art and a preference for the uniform patches of colour that can also be found in poster art. But the clownishness of pop art is absent, as are references to the world of advertising and commercials. Perhaps it is more of a didactic gesture; if we are talking about things that carry such gravitas, let us use a technique that conceals nothing.

Jan Vanriet also loves the most important object in the entire visible cosmos: the human face, always changing and full of meaning. He paints men and women. His portraits have something tender about them, sometimes ironic too. They are not free of ambivalence, but there is almost nothing in the human theatre that is free of ambivalence. In his portraits, but also in other works, Vanriet achieves something “more”, something that causes an invisible halo of poetry to hang above the people or objects depicted, the same halo that used to float above the heads of angels.

Let us return to the “aesthetics of the whole”. Vanriet rejects the unjustified, foolish division into “engaged” art and “aestheticising” or pure art, a division that suggests that there are two realities, not one. No, there is only one reality, which is both “political” and innocent, historical and timeless, public and private. Perhaps we will never understand how these two faces of the world are connected, but that is our problem, not the world's.

However, it is not just about understanding. It is about individual works, about images. It is about the sensitivity of the brush and the acuity of thought. It is about the viewer asking themselves some important questions – and the viewer is often shown here, is included in the performance, the viewer participates in the drama – we see them standing in front of the image and wondering whether “it concerns me”. Yes, it most certainly does.