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Lot Essay
Executed in 1908, Fillettes devant la vague plunges the viewer into the world of Léon Spilliaert. A remarkable artist who forged his own unique path against the backdrop of Symbolism and the growing interest in Expressionism that took such hold of the avant garde in his native Belgium, Spilliaert created pictures that are profoundly poetic and atmospheric, and which would come to influence the Surrealism that would later develop there. Fillettes devant la vague is an intensely stylised image: the waves that undulate across the entirety of the picture surface lend the work an abstract quality; this results in a stark contrast between the progression of light and dark waves and the figures of the girls, heightening their sense of frailty. They have been rendered in a bluish tone that expresses their anxiety and discomfort at being perched on their tiny rock, increasingly isolated by the coming tide. That glimmer of colour throws them into dramatic relief against the rigorous palette of the background, the manner of depiction thus perfectly chiming with the subject itself.
Spilliaert's pictures were anchored in the real world, rather than the fantasy-Symbolism that flavoured the works of, say, Fernand Khnopff or Alfred Kubin, two artists to whom his oeuvre has sometimes been related. Yet Spilliaert used reality as a springboard for his mysterious, mystical investigations of the human condition. Here, the girls cling to one another for solace and support, surrounded as they are by the vastness of the sea; faced with the hostile elements, these fragile figures echo the famous paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. But the wonder that Spilliaert taps into is distinctly his own. This is at the core of the description given by the author François Jollivet-Castelot, who met Spilliaert the year after Fillettes devant la vague was made:
'In the presence of Spilliaert's magnificent works there is always a sensation of greatness, of profound thought. His art communicates, above all, the vertigo of the infinite. When he paints a seascape, it is as if, there in front of you, is the endless ocean with its mysterious waves, the monotonous beach and a sky which becomes one with the sea in the distance... Spilliaert's style remains untiringly grand, beautiful, simple - as large as nature herself' (Jollivet-Castelot, quoted in F. Edebau, 'Spilliaert: Artist of Ostend', pp. 13-18, 'Léon Spilliaert: Symbol and Expression in 20th Century Belgian Art, exh. cat., Washington, DC, 1980, p. 13).
Spilliaert's pictures were anchored in the real world, rather than the fantasy-Symbolism that flavoured the works of, say, Fernand Khnopff or Alfred Kubin, two artists to whom his oeuvre has sometimes been related. Yet Spilliaert used reality as a springboard for his mysterious, mystical investigations of the human condition. Here, the girls cling to one another for solace and support, surrounded as they are by the vastness of the sea; faced with the hostile elements, these fragile figures echo the famous paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. But the wonder that Spilliaert taps into is distinctly his own. This is at the core of the description given by the author François Jollivet-Castelot, who met Spilliaert the year after Fillettes devant la vague was made:
'In the presence of Spilliaert's magnificent works there is always a sensation of greatness, of profound thought. His art communicates, above all, the vertigo of the infinite. When he paints a seascape, it is as if, there in front of you, is the endless ocean with its mysterious waves, the monotonous beach and a sky which becomes one with the sea in the distance... Spilliaert's style remains untiringly grand, beautiful, simple - as large as nature herself' (Jollivet-Castelot, quoted in F. Edebau, 'Spilliaert: Artist of Ostend', pp. 13-18, 'Léon Spilliaert: Symbol and Expression in 20th Century Belgian Art, exh. cat., Washington, DC, 1980, p. 13).