Floris Jespers (18 March 1889 in Borgerhout – 16 April 1965 in Antwerp) was a Belgian Avant-garde painter.
After his graduation from the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts, he hooked happening with the poet Paul Van Ostaijen and joined the Antwerp protester movement of the 1920s. He contributed to the publications Ça Ira, Le Centaure and Sélection and befriended Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes behind they published Du Cubisme. In 1921 he had an exhibition abroad for the first time (the exhibition of the Dutch artistic outfit De Branding taking into consideration Kurt Schwitters and Fokko Mees). In 1925 he became a advocate of Contemporary Art (Kunst van Heden).
He travelled to Belgian Congo for the first time in 1951. He stayed in the city of Kamina where his son Mark worked as a doctor. The journey was a pronouncement for him. He translated his impressions of African women into luminous frescoes. The African paintings of Jespers are not genre scenes but they gift a greater vision of Africa. From the puzzling gazes and the faces of the Swimmers painted in Ostend in 1927 and the Congolese women of the fifties the thesame idealised vision of the untouchable and enigmatic African woman emerges.
He plus used the verre églomisé technique.
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