Art historians, authors of retrospectives and art lovers: we all tend to associate artists with a particular movement, especially the artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Spilliaert is no exception, with one foot in the 19th and the other in the 20th century. On the boundaries of Symbolism, Expressionism and even Surrealism. We see these art movements reflected in his work.
His early work displays an affinity with Symbolism. This originally literary movement suggests and implies, is highly focused on one’s own individual experience, evokes the mystery of the everyday or refers to a higher reality using symbols. Symbolism emerged shortly after Spilliaert was born, and a generation later his works show some of its characteristic features. He often generalised when it came to women, portraying them as dangerous creatures, his self-portraits focused on himself and his interiors and still lifes conjure up a sense of mystery. Moreover, he worked primarily on paper, just like many symbolists who elevated the finished drawing to create a work of art.
Spilliaert issued the following advice to a young artist: ‘Never paint from your imagination. Symbolism, mysticism, etc., etc., total chaos and madness, all I have done to date. I’d like to destroy everything. Ah! If only I could be free of my restless and feverish nature, if only life did not have me in its clutches, I would move to the countryside somewhere to merely, quite simply reproduce what my eyes see without adding or omitting anything. That is life and that is the reality of painting.’ 1 In 1931, long after Symbolism had enjoyed its heyday, Spilliaert’s art was still viewed as ‘the expression of the soul’, entirely in keeping with that earlier symbolist movement.2
What’s more, Spilliaert’s work, because of its simplification in terms of form and lack of detail, displays similarities to Expressionism that was highly popular in Belgium shortly before and especially after the First World War. Art dealers André De Ridder and Paul-Gustave Van Hecke put artists such as Frits Van den Berghe, Gust De Smet and Constant Permeke on the map as ‘Flemish Expressionists’ through their gallery Sélection. In May 1920, De Ridder even asked Spilliaert, as a ‘forerunner of Expressionism’, to entrust works to the gallery.3
And Spilliaert was no stranger to Surrealism, either. In 1924, for example, he read André Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism with great interest. In his own words, he found that ‘some pages exude an intense evocative power. Everything happens in the dream. But a direct dream like reality.’4 These days, Spilliaert is recognised as a forerunner of the Surrealists because his work profoundly confuses the mind.5
Moreover, just as many art historians like to assign labels, they are equally happy to write about how certain artists do not like to be labelled. The same is true of Spilliaert, of whom it is said, just as often, that he is difficult to categorise under a single movement.
