Léon Spilliaert

David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert (1881–1946) at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location in New York, organized in close collaboration with Agnews, Brussels, and curated by its director, Dr. Noémie Goldman. A specialist in nineteenth-century Belgian art, Goldman has collaborated with Spilliaert expert Dr. Anne Adriaens-Pannier on many publications and exhibitions focused on the artist. This presentation will be a rare opportunity to appreciate a significant number of the artist’s works and marks the first dedicated Spilliaert show in New York in nearly five decades.

On view will be a representative selection of works that date primarily to the 1900s and 1910s—a creative and highly productive period in Spilliaert’s early career—and epitomize his singular enigmatic style. These works, many of which are among the largest and most iconic in Spilliaert’s oeuvre, demonstrate the influence of symbolism on the artist as he began to develop his own distinctive expressionist language. Highlights of the exhibition will include two examples of his notable and brooding self-portraits, a range of figurative and landscape scenes distinguished by his signature dark palette, and an important portfolio of lithographs whose ten images are inspired by the poems of Belgian symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949). Often depicting solitary figures in dreamlike spaces or nocturnal coastal landscapes, Spilliaert’s compositions convey a sense of melancholy and stillness and embody an affect influenced by the artist’s life in the seaside city of Ostend, Belgium, which is known for its long beachside promenade and mysterious atmosphere.