the exhibition at the Carmen Thyssen museum in Malaga that proves it

With the exception of the surrealist René Magritte and some symbolists, the modern Belgian pictorial tradition is little known in our country, although the geopolitical situation of Brussels, with its comings and goings to Paris, has made it a prominent city in Europe. during the century. avant-garde period. This exhibition, curated by Claire LeBlancdirector of the Musée d'Ixelles in Brussels, now under renovation, brings us closer to eighty works by fifty painters to review a century, from 1860 onwards, in correspondence with the chronology of the host museum, ending up considering whether there were characteristic accents between Belgian.

The tour begins in the Noble Room on the first floor, with fabrics that recall romanticism as the first movement after Belgium's independence from the Netherlands in 1830. Here the importance of Courbet's influence is presented after his exhibition in Brussels in 1851, in landscapes of rich herbs like Hyppolyte Boulenger, versus the more fluid painting of Frenchman Barbizon. Along with them, a social realism with its own stamp, with Constantine Meunier It is Eugène Laermans.

In the usual exhibition room on the third floor, the various movements are discussed, encouraged by Eighth Mauslawyer and art critic who promoted the founding of Les XX and La Libre Esthétique, in whose salons he exhibited the best of the French impressionists and post-impressionists, benefiting from a flourishing market maintained by a powerful bourgeoisie at the forefront of the industrial revolution.

[Magritte's everyday magic]

Through landscapes and portraits of women in an impressionist style, such as woman in an interior1886, from Guillaume van Strydonckwe arrive at the peculiar absorption of Seurat's pointillism with very powerful works, such as the large canvas of Theo Van Rysselberghe, tea in the garden1901, depicting three women, the Belgian poet Marie Closetknown under the pseudonym Jean Dominique, and the singer Laura Fle with the painter's wife. It's also interesting dunes in the sun, H. 1903, from Anna Bochthe only member of the avant-garde group Les XX, who as a collector was also the only person to buy a painting by Vincent van Gogh during his lifetime.

The Nabis proposal had a very original representative in Georges Lemen. Just like Fauvism, in which it stands out jos alberto with the great interior1914. On the other hand, the important New art captained by Henry van de Velde and Victor Horta in Brussels, here with a single painting on the ideal of the androgynous. How the presence, only on paper, of the Symbolists falls short Felicien Rops It is Fernand Khnopff. And from Ensor, always impressive.

The final party comes with surrealists Paul Delvaux and Magritte, who were heavily influenced by De Chirico early on, along with Gustave DeSmet which, with its flat colors, points to the remarkable tradition of graphic art in Belgium.

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