Belgian painter, draughtsman and sculptor.
After spending his early childhood years in Antwerp and in Burght, a village on the Escaut, he settled with his family in Ostend. There his father, Henri-Louis Permeke (1849–1912), also a painter, founded in October 1893 the Musée Communal d’Ostende, of which he was the first curator. Constant attended the Bruges Academy in 1903 and the Ghent Academy in 1904, where he studied under Jean Delvin (1853–1922) and met Albert Servaes and Fritz Van den Berghe. His contact with these artists, and with Gustave De Smet, whom he met through Van den Berghe, encouraged him c. 1909 to move with them to the artists’ colony of LAETHEM-SAINT-MARTIN. There he was closely associated with the second group of Flemish Expressionists and met his future wife Marietje.