CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/30/2020

Luc Tuymans on the ghostlike presence of Léon Spilliaert

"When I first encountered the work of Léon Spilliaert," Luc Tuymans writes in this enlightening new exhibition catalog, "I was enchanted by its awkwardness, its appearance divulging itself as if an apparition. Under blue nocturnal light, his work reveals itself from different vantage points, where objects and people undergo a process of metamorphosis, morphing into ghostlike presences. The perspective stretches to an ultimate vanishing point. Colors emerge from an atmospheric context. Shadows contain and at the same time conceal the image."

Above: "Beech Trunks," 1945. Indian ink, pen and watercolor on paper, 60 x 49 cm. Private collection.