Léon Spilliaert

Léon Spilliaert was born in Ostend on 28 July 1881 and died in Brussels on 23 November 1946.
He frequented the milieu of Belgian symbolism, of which Maeterlinck and Verhaeren were the best-known members. His influences ranged from Edvard Munch to Fernand Khnopff, as well as Nietzsche and Lautréamont, while his paintings and the themes they depict can be likened to those of Edward Hopper, Spilliaert's contemporary. His works are characterised by an obvious melancholy, imbued with sadness, even anguish, through the representation of large empty spaces, or self-portraits playing on the shadows in the relief of the face. His compositions sometimes emanate an atmosphere of nightmare and drama, or at least a deep, vague sense of wandering, perdition and solitude.