LÉON SPILLIAERT

Spilliaert is best known for his deeply psychological cycle of self-portraits (1902–1909) and chilling, ominous nocturnal scenes of his hometown of Ostend. Working in a variety of mediums on paper or cardboard, including watercolour, gouache, pastel, pencil, and charcoal—but never oil paint—Léon Spilliaert carefully replicated the fall of light in manner that conveyed a dark emotional and mental state.

Having to abandon studies at Bruges’ Academy of Fine Arts after a few months due to ill health, Léon Spilliaert ended up being self-taught, forging his own artistic path. Among his early influences were the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Friedrich Nietzsche. This and lifelong insomnia and stomach ulcers likely contributed to the dark and lonely mood of Léon Spilliaert’s art.

Léon Spilliaert’s later influences came from contact with symbolist writers in Brussels and modernists like Edvard Munch and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in Paris. His paintings and drawings possess a sense of solitude and self-reflection that also aligns closely with better-known European contemporaries like Munch and Vilhelm Hammershøi.

Spilliaert lived his entire life in Brussels and the coastal city of Ostend, and until recent years has been little-known in institutions outside of Belgium. His enigmatic images have found a legacy in the work of later Belgian artists such as Luc Tuymans.

Michael Irwin | Ocula | 2020