From Rops to Spilliaert, via Khnopff, Delville or Minne, the exhibition displays a rich panorama of artistic creation at the end of the century. At the same time it sketches the picture of a society in crisis. It also considers the importance of foreign influences like Wagnerism in the opera or the art of the Pre-Raphaelites and it integrates the significant development of the decorative arts and Art nouveau of which Brussels will become the capital. A particular emphasis is put on the essential relation between Symbolism and literature.

 

Is the Symbolist movement the last appearance of « Humanism » just before the cataclysm of the First World War or does it, through the whole of artistic expressions typical for the end of the century, pave the ground for 20th-century art ? Is it the last blossoming of a tradition in agony or the first seed of a future modernity ?

 

Enriched with European and American loans, the exhibition and its complementary activities offer the first major panorama of the Symbolist movement in Belgium. While including all areas of creation, it has shaped a sensitivity that has lost nothing of its topical character.