Masereel

Frans Masereel (1889–1972) was a Belgian graphic artist and painter renowned for pioneering the wordless novel, a form of sequential art created with woodcut prints to tell stories without text. Born in Blankenberge, he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and later lived in Paris, where his stark black-and-white images addressed themes of labor, poverty, urban life, and war.

Masereel produced dozens of large woodcut prints and several book-length wordless novels. His best-known works include The Sun (Le Soleil) (1919) and 25 Images of a Man's Life (1920), which used continuous sequences of images to convey social critique. His work helped establish a European tradition of politically engaged, visually driven storytelling and influenced later graphic novelists in Europe and North America, including Lynd Ward and Will Eisner.

During the interwar period Masereel's politically charged imagery faced suppression under totalitarian regimes, and his prints circulated widely in exile and in independent publishing circles. He remained active in the arts through much of his life, and his influence persists in museums, libraries, and contemporary printmaking studios. The Frans Masereel Centre in Belgium continues his legacy by promoting woodcut and relief-print techniques.