Leon Spilliaert

Leon Spilliaert (born with Ostend in 1881, died with Brussels in 1946) is a Belgian painter having attended the medium of the Belgian symbolism, whose Maeterlinck and Verhaeren was the most known members. Its influences go from Edvard Munch to Fernand Khnopff, but also Nietzsche and Lautréamont, while its paintings as well as the topics which they represent can be close to those of Edward Hopper, contemporary of Spilliaert. It was close to James Ensor, another Belgian painter.

Work

The majority of its works are dated what facilitates the chronological rebuilding of it. It thus signs its first fabric in 1899. Its fabrics are characterized by an obvious melancholy, impressed sadness, through the representation of broad empty spaces (beaches and extents maritime), or of self-portraits exploiting the shades in the cracks of the face, an Clearly-obscure treatment of the light way and a kind of irradiation. Some of its works confine with the abstraction, by geometrical structures (diagonal and curves in concentric circles). Its inspiration undoubtedly comes from the city where it was born, Ostend, and of night wanderings in the balneal city with the length of the beaches and the dams. An environment of nightmare and a certain tragedy emanate sometimes from its fabrics, or at least deep and vague feeling of wandering and perdition, of loneliness. The materials used are the Aquarelle, the gouache, the pastel, the colored pencils and the Indian ink. Its works are exposed to Ostend (Art schools) and to Brussels (royal Musées of the Art schools of Belgium). One can see the Moonlight and lights with the Musée of Orsay to Paris.

Its work remains exclusively pictorial: it did only few writings and did not teach nor not exerted the function of criticism.

Principal works

Moonlight and light , 1900
the continuation, 1910
the tunnel , 1935

External bond

Works of Leon Spilliaert in the catalog of [[royal Museums of the Art schools of Belgium]] the

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