Eugène Yoors was an artist who mainly made a name for himself as stained glass painter. Eugène was one of Jan’s great influences as an artist and he was the source of Jan’s fascination with the Roma. Magda Peeters was a poet and peace activist. Eugène and Magda supported their teenage son during his travels with the gypsies. Throughout his life, Jan Yoors was able to count on their far-flung network in artistic, Catholic and pacifist environments. Jan also inherited their values.
Eugène Yoors was the son of Constantius Alexander, a native of Antwerp who was a factory manager and consul in Seville, Spain. Eugène grew up in Spain and became acquainted with the gitanos, the Spanish gypsies. He returned to Antwerp when he was 20. He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. That is where he got to know the eccentric writer and art lover Joséphin Péladan.
During the First World War Eugène Yoors fled to the Netherlands, where he married Magda Peeters in 1918. After the war, Eugène Yoors, Felix Timmermans and Flor van Reeth were at the basis of the Pelgrim Movement, which wanted to give Christian art in Europe a new impulse. It was a mild reform movement. Its members wanted to create authentic religious art via their personal belief without being dogmatic. He focused on religious stained-glass windows in order to support his family.
Jan Yoors spent long days in his father’s atelier. After work Eugène talked about his childhood in Spain. Those stories drove Jan to seek out contact with the gypsies who had pitched their camp in Berchem in 1934. Jan inherited many ideas about art from his father: respect for tradition, but with the integration of modern imagination, and the outlook that the duty or mission of artistry is to uplift the people.
Magda Peeters grew up in a cosmopolitan and rich family that spoke French, English and Spanish. She was the daughter of a Cuban mother and a Belgian father, both from rich shipping families. In the years before the First World War she started publishing in Dutch. In 1914 she followed her friend Eugène Yoors to the Netherlands. After the war she was active in various Catholic and pacifist organisations. In 1936 Magda became a provincial councillor in Antwerp for Rex, but she broke with the party in 1939 because it was too anti-Semitic. Together with the journalist Betsy Hollants she founded the pro-Jewish Catholic Bureau for Israel. Hollants was a good friend and helped Jan Yoors at crucial moments. She introduced him to the resistance during the Second World War. It was upon her advice that Yoors went to New York.
During the Second World War the married couple fled to Great Britain together with Jan’s sister Beatrix. After the war they returned to Antwerp. They lived in Berchem until their deaths.
