Holiday activities: Exhibition Léon Spilliaert

Last week was a good opportunity to explore the extensive programme that Brussels usually offers for the culture-goers.
My mom, who belongs to this category and educated me as so, proposed me a visit to the Exhibition Léon Spilliaert, at the Belgian Royal Museum of Fine Arts.

I discovered this Belgian painter when visiting a quite famous exhibition that the Museum of Ostende organised, some ten years ago, to celebrate four Belgian artists: James Ensor, Paul Delvaux, Constant Permeke and Léon Spilliaert. He was born, like Ensor, in Ostende, and the inspiration of the so particular Northern See beaches, all in grey and beige, is notable in his work. Spilliaert can be situated at this artistically interesting period, at the beginning of the XXst c., when Mallarmé had just opened so many perspectives on art, when symbolism was to be born, and when Belgium concealed a whole branch of artists and writers, all of them involved into one of these artistic movements that will become essential to the history of contemporary arts.

But even if he was inspired by all this atmosphere (he illustrated several books of Maeterlink; I particularly liked the drawing "Princess Maleine"), Spilliaert worked quite alone: he was inspired by Ostende, by the eternal question of equation between man and the universal nature, and by the reflect of himself, seen in a miror and represented through his autoportraits. One of them had always impressed me: it is made with only stains of black China ink. The striking portrait of the artist, recognizable with his large front and his curly hair, becomes clear only as you step back and take some distance from the frame. Spilliaert is also well known for his "marines" (or views of the see and the beach). No human element, immensity and immobilism, but still, something always suggests the movement: a tree, a lighthouse, or simply a diagonal line.

There is on Wikipedia very few information about Spilliaert, but you can get an idea of his work with the Fabritius gallery database (link on Wiki).
The exhibition will be held in Brussels until February, and Spilliaert certainly deserves a glance.
-----------------
Exhibition Léon Spilliaert - Royal Museum of Fine Arts, rue Royale in Brussels

* * * for the choice of works, the organisation of the exhibition, the explanations (in 3 languages - you don't need absolutely an audioguide, even if you don't know the artist at all).
* * for the price. It was not too expensive, and there are many discounts (for students, groups, etc.)
* * for the choice of the items available in the Museum shop: on Spilliaert, painting of this period, Belgium of this period, but also jewelry, books by important authors of this period, etc.
- - - the "minus" because there was way too many people: it was crowded. Impossible to stay alone in front of any frame. And it was simply not the appropriate day/moment to add some guide tours.

posted by Thérèse @ 5:53 PM