FR

Léon Spilliaert

28 juillet 1881 ( Ostende) / 23 novembre 1946 (Bruxelles)
Living in : Belgique
Working in : Belgique

Léon Spilliaert was born in Ostend, Belgium in 1881, to a Flemish perfumer father who supplied the court of King Leopold II and lived in the small fishing port that had not yet become a fashionable seaside resort, since an ancestor was a lighthouse keeper in the 18th century. In poor health, suffering from stomach ulcers that prevented him from sleeping and made him "wild, nervous and angry", Spilliaert quickly abandoned his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bruges to draw on his own. Between 1900 and 1914, he developed a literary "melancholy" style, eminently personal and bordering on abstraction, made of lunar seascapes, abandoned architectures, gales on solitary figures or wild dances of small gesticulating characters, reminiscent of prehistoric graffiti.


Extract from the article of Emmanuel Daydé published in N°94 Art Absolument< review/a>.



Artist's issues






Artist's exhibitions


Léon Spilliaert. Lumière et solitude

13/10/2020 - 10/01/2021
(Paris) Musée d'Orsay