Antwerp (Belgium). The Koniklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (KMSK, Museum of Fine Arts) in Antwerp houses the finest collections of works by the luminous and intimate Rik Wouters (1882-1916), the pearly farcesque James Ensor (1860-1949), and the electric Jules Schmalzigaug (1882-1917), three Belgian artists who shaped modernity in painting between the end of the 19th century and early 20th century.
Each of these artists adopted their own treatment of color, breaking with the palette favored by the Impressionists; However, the three come together in the use of pure pigments, vermillion red, cobalt blue, sunny yellow or emerald green, which energize their canvases by creating music for the eye. Bringing together a few pearls from its collection, embellished with significant loans, the museum has created a visual score centered on color. If this common thread may seem like a pretext, the result is enchanting by the quality of the works selected and by the concordances, sometimes unexpected, raised between the works of these singular artists.
Jules Schmalzigaug (1882-1917), Development of a theme in red: Carnival1914, oil on cardboard, 81 × 64 cm.
© Rik Klein Gotink / Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp
The effect of a carnival
No coincidence if the route opens with The Holy Family with the parrot (1614) by Peter Paul Rubens in the center of which vibrates the dazzling red of the Virgin’s mantle, because it was in a letter to Umberto Boccioni that Jules Schmalzigaug spoke of his admiration for “the red that sings” of the Baroque master. Of the three artists, Schmalzigaug, sometimes defined as the only Belgian futurist, is undoubtedly the least known to the general public even though his canvases in pure colors bursting with movement are worth the detour. One of the interests of the exhibition also lies in the context of the research work of the three artists with, for example, the vibrant brushwork of Henri de Braekeleer (1840-1888) which influenced Ensor or the thick and expressive colors of the Frenchman Adolphe Monticelli (1824-1886), surprisingly close to the touch of Schmalzigaug.
A room, decorated all in red, is devoted to drawings where we discover connections and convergences between the features of the three masters. As if to echo the musical vibrancy of the colors, the exhibition distills in counterpoint the reinterpretation of works such as the Prometheus by Alexander Scriabin, composed between 1908 and 1910.
At the conclusion of the course is The Fall of the Rebel Angels (1889), oil on canvas in which Ensor revisits the dizzying biblical battle between the archangel Michael and evil in an explosion of light and colors barely concealing the demons. By his side, Development of a theme in red: Carnival (1914, [voir ill.]), by Schmalzigaug, a work considered to be the first abstract painting in Belgian painting. The lines and shapes in red, blue, yellow, black or white do not reflect the carnival so much as the effect it produces. A quarter of a century separates the two paintings, shot through with the same colorful fury and the same visual pleasure.
