A sleeping man lies in an abstract dark cosmic blue environment while three strange figures in red and yellow and purple dance on the body and float. They seem to rise from an opening in the stomach area. The figures seem to hide behind their bandages on the one hand, but at the same time they want to discard them in order to expose their true nature without completely sacrificing the mystery. This work can be seen as a run for the many paintings and drawings with a strongly surrealistic slant in which grotesque dream figures take the upper hand. With this Van den Berghe points to the possibility of using the dream as a means to get to know the mechanism and content of the unconscious. There is a smaller preliminary study (35cm x 58cm) of this work that is in private possession where the background was represented in brown tonalities just like the sleeping figure.
Flemish art and heritage collections, in great detail