Léon Spilliaert

His work was inspired by visual and literary works by Edvard Munch, Fernand Khnopff, Edgar Allan Poe, Nietzsche and Lautréamont. His subject matter was wide-ranging and included self-portraits, marines, forest views, portraits, still lifes, airships, dolls and genre scenes. He was a prolific illustrator of contemporary and historical literary works. His style is characterized by tenebrism and simplicity of form, and the bitter and mysterious expression of his characters and landscapes.

The recorded working language is French. The field of work recorded is painting. Places of work recorded in the authority are Paris, Ostend and Brussels. Work by Léon Spilliaert is recorded in the collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Museum of Fine Arts Ghent (MSK), Groeningemuseum and Mu.ZEE - Kunstmuseum aan Zee.

• Name — Léon Spilliaert • Born — 28 July 1881 • Birthplace — Ostend, Belgium • Died — 23 November 1946 • Place of death — Ixelles, Belgium • Field — draughtsman, watercolorist, illustrator, Painter, graphic designer • Movement — Symbolism, expressionism

Spilliaert was born in Ostend, the oldest of seven children of Léonard-Hubert Spilliaert, a perfumer, and his wife Léonie (née Jonckheere). From childhood, he displayed an interest in art and drawing. A prolific doodler and autodidact, he was predominantly a self-taught artist. Sickly and reclusive, he spent most of his youth sketching scenes of ordinary life and the Belgian countryside. • Illustration — Vertigo In 1899, at the age of 18, he entered the Bruges Academy of Art as a pupil of Pieter Raoux. Among his classmates were Léon Slabbinck and Cornelis Leegenhoek. However, he soon became disappointed and left the academy in January 1900. For this lack of formal artistic training, Spilliaert is considered more of an autodidact. When he was 21, Spilliaert went to work in Brussels for Edmond Deman, a publisher of the works of symbolist writers, for which Spilliaert was to design illustrations. Deman introduced Léon Spilliaert to the art scene in Brussels. It was also there that he discovered the work of the old masters and contemporary painters through reproductions and exhibited works of art. Spilliaert stayed with Deman until January 1904. He had an affair with the 17-year old daughter of Deman which ended in a painful breakup which sent Spilliaert into a depression. At the end of January 1904, Spilliaert left Brussels for Paris to try his luck with a publisher or printer of art books. Deman gave him a letter addressed to the writer Emile Verhaeren asking him to offer Spilliaert all the help he needed. In February 1904 Spilliaert met Verhaeren, who lived in Saint-Cloud, in Paris. A great friendship quickly developed between the two men. Verhaeren bought some of his works and introduced him to his friends and art dealers. One of them was Clovis Sagot, who at the time was exhibiting works by Pablo Picasso. • Illustration — Self-Portrait with Masks, 1903 Between 1907 and 1913, Léon Spilliaert exhibited his work at various events: Salon de Printemps de Jean De Mot, Salon des Indépendants de Bruxelles, the salon of the Brussels Doe Stil Voort and the exhibition Les Bleus de la G.G.G. in Brussels. In 1916 he married Rachel Vergison. They settled in Brussels, where their daughter was born. After the First World War, he collaborates with the Sélection group, which exhibits his work for many years. In 1922, the first exhibition entirely dedicated to his paintings takes place at the Brussels gallery Centaure. From 1925 to 1931, his work hangs in the Kursaal in Ostend. In 1937, he joined the Compagnons de l'Art. In 1922 he was made a Knight of the Order of the Crown. Having settled at 13 rue Alphonse-Renard in Ixelles in 1942, he died there of a heart attack, on November 23, 1946.

Watercolor, gouache, pastel, and charcoal—often in combination—were the means by which he produced many of his works, among which are a number of monochrome self-portraits executed in the early years of the twentieth century. Spilliaert's expressive use of black finds parallels in the work of Odilon Redon, who was a significant influence. Frequently depicting a lone figure in a dreamlike space, Spilliaert's paintings convey a sense of melancholy and silence. His later work shows a concentration on seascapes. Among the best-known works of Léon Spilliaert are the images Digue la nuit and Clair de Lune et Lumières. Both works are in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. • Illustration — The Absinth Drinker, 1907 Most of Spilliaert's works are marked by an oppressive alien and elegiac atmosphere. In Digue la nuit (1908), the painter removes any naturalistic characteristics of the landscape depicted in the image and creates a stylization in which the location, that serves as a template, is redesigned to become the mirror of a state of mind. Solitude, mystery, and hallucination are suggested by the landscape. In Clair de Lune et Lumières (c. 1909), the colonnade and arcades of the façade of the Kursaal ballroom on the seawall in Ostend served Spilliaert as a basis for the composition of an urban landscape. In this pastel painting, he catches the eerie transformation of the architecture at night and the strangeness that comes from artificial lighting. With its cosmic, metaphysical traits Clair de Lune et Lumières reveals the influence of Van Gogh, and is reminiscent of The Starry Night. In the period 1902–1909, Spilliaert concentrated on creating complex, profound self-portraits of an introspective nature. His 1903 Self-Portrait with Masks (Musée d'Orsay) is a dramatic self-presentation with ghostly apparitions in the background and a wry face in three-quarter pose. This image may be regarded as a prototype for the three-quarter-portraits Spilliaert created later. • Illustration — The Pilot of the Airship, 1910, The Phoebus Foundation

He also worked under the name Spilliaert, Leon. The authorities additionally record the headings Leon Spilliaert, Leontius Petrus Ludovicus Spilliaert, Léontius-Petrus-Ludovicus Spilliaert and Leontius-Petrus-Ludovicus Spilliaert. His recorded language was French.