Léon SPILLIAERT (1881-1946) Lot n° 38

Léon SPILLIAERT (1881-1946) Solitude, 1901 Charcoal and ink on paper Signed and titled upper right, located Ostend and dated October 1901 lower right 25 x 33 cm Exhibitions : - Tokyo, Musée d'Art Isetan, "Terres d'inspiration des peintres de Pont-Aven, Nabis et Symbolistes", April 2 - 14 April 1987, no. 119 (repr. p. 107 of exhibition catalog) (Travelling exhibition: Niigata, City Art Museum, April 18 - May 17, 1987; Osaka, Daimaru Museum, May 20 - June 8 June 1987; Shizuoka, Prefectural Museum of Art, June 13 - July 19, 1987; Himeji, City Museum of Art, July 25 - August 23, 1987; YTamanashi, Prefectural Museum of Art, August 27 - September 27, 1987) - Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Léon Spilliaert, September 22, 2006 - February 3, 2007 (label on back) Spilliaert only spent a few months at the Bruges Academy. The artist's only artistic background only the advice of a relative, landscape painter Émile Spilliaert, and a visit in 1900 to the Exposition Universelle Exposition Universelle in Paris, which showcased a wide range of contemporary European art. In Belgium, the British Pre-Raphaelite movement influenced Symbolist representation and imposed its subjects where the role of women is predominant. An astonishing maturity for a young artist barely 20 years old is revealed in our drawing, as much by the the boldness of the line and the deliberate asymmetry of the composition, where the chosen theme - a woman curled up on the beach in beach in Ostend, lost in deep thought and immersed in her past. What is this resigned woman thinking and looking at, as if forgotten, against a backdrop of elliptical landscape and unchanging sea? unchanging sea? And yet, despite her lack of compassion for the human condition, Spilliaert, in this austere setting, still lends this body pressed against the dike a presence, a dignity. (Source: "Spilliaert" exhibition, Seita, 1997)