Oskar Jespers was born into a family of sculptors; his father Emile Jespers was also a sculptor. At that time, around the turn of the century, Constantine Meunier and George Minne represented modern sculpture in Belgium.

While Jespers was a student, he also became aware of Auguste Rodin and shared the sculptural approach of his contemporaries Constantin Brancusi, Amadeo Modigliani, Alexander Archipenko, Jacques Lipchitz, Ossip Zadkine and Pablo Picasso.

Although his engagement with French Cubism did not begin until during the First World War and he did not seriously occupy himself with the expressive substance of French sculpture until the 1920's, Jespers nonetheless added greater depth to his own style -...