Léon Spilliaert

Jerome Brackx, Belgium
Private Collection, Belgium
Thence by descent to the present owners

Frankfurt, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Pastelle und Zeichnungen des Belgischen Symbolismus, 1988, no. 224, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Brussels, Group 2 Gallery, Artists from the coast, 1995
Paris, Musée de la Seita, Spilliaert, œuvres de jeunesse (1900-1918), 1997-98, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Ostend, Museum Moderne Kunst, Ensor en de avant-gardes aan zee, 2006-07

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down and not attached to the mount. There are artist's pin holes to all four corners. There is some very light rubbing to the extreme edges, probably due to previous framing. This work is in overall very good condition.
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Prominently known as a self-taught artist, Léon Spilliaert was one of Belgium‘s most important artists of the 20^th century. Strongly influenced by symbolism, his work emphasises on subjective reality and evocative moods, echoing the expressionist work of Edvard Munch and his contemporary James Ensor. Spilliaert bridged the transition between these styles in his scenes of solitary, introspective figures in isolated, mysterious settings resulting in a diverse and enigmatic œuvre.

Flacons et boîtes is exemplary in its combination of life-like and manipulated elements, which have been enhanced and enlarged so as to become almost surreal in their presence. Spilliaert skilfully depicted the reflections of the light on the glass, however he has flattened the forms of the bottles and set them in an undefined, angular setting, enhancing the qualities of this work and the relationship of the elements within their abstracted background.

Flacons et boîtes was created at a time when the artist worked intensely on a celebrated series of self-portraits. This involvement resulted in a somewhat intrinsic quality of the present work which appears torn between an introspective representation and the quest for a purified visual language to capture reality. In a letter of 1904 Spilliaert described his struggle: ‘Never ever paint from imagination. Symbolism, mysticism, etc, etc, all of that is a breakdown, an illness.  I want to tear up everything I've done up until now ... Ah if only I could be rid of my anxious, feverish character, if life did not have me in its grip, I would go somewhere in the countryside to copy quite simply what my eyes saw without interpreting or embellishing.  That is true painting’ (quoted in Bruxelles, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Léon Spilliaert, un esprit libre, 2006, p. 12). Spilliaert’s concerns with a hyper-realistic way of depicting the world around him resulted in a timeless evocation of the beauty of everyday objects and the purity of their forms through a subtle and velvet-like modulation of colour and medium.