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What I Admire About the Hauntingly Brilliant Art of this Lesser-Known Belgian Genius
A painter of compelling self-portraits and atmospheric landscapes
Léon Spilliaert was a Belgian painter whose ethereal self-portraits and eerie scenes of the Belgian coastline generate a powerful allure.
I became familiar with his work only a couple of years ago, and in the time since have come to see his surreal paintings as having the quality of personal testimonies — which paradoxically is why they speak so universally.
Startling as these images appear at first glance, you can’t help but keep looking…
In a painting like Self-Portrait, made in 1908 when Spilliaert was around 27 years old, the artist presents himself in a three-quarter profile, his hair piled high and tangled in lamplight.
There is a small knife on the table in front of him, whilst the room behind is a patchwork of glowing black mirrors and murky shadows.
The suggestion is of estrangement — perhaps a separation from society — but I think this painting is just as much a hymn to the artist’s sense of being different to everyone else around him.
