Leon Spilliart is the largest Belgian symbolist artist. Watercolor, gouache, pastel, charcoal, pencil, ink - often in combination - were the means by which he created his work.

The event, which turned Leon's idea of ​​painting, was his trip with his father to the Paris World Exhibition in 1900. Here he first saw the work of the symbolists Giovanni Segantini, Aubrey Beardsley, Ferdinand Hodler, Walter Crane and Gustav Klimt. The paintings of the masters made a tremendous impression on him, predetermining his career as a symbolist artist.

Slowly but surely, Leon Spilliart's paintings began to receive recognition. The first sign was the appearance of paintings in several popular salons, and the first serious buyers appeared.

In 1914, with the outbreak of World War I, he was mobilized for civil service, but fled from military service to neutral Switzerland and remained there until the end of the war. In 1916, he married Raquel Fergison, in March of the following year they moved to Brussels, and a year later their only daughter Madeleine was born.

The artist has never been in good health. Over the past 10 years of his life, he suffered from angina pectoris and concomitant diseases. And already in the winter of 1946, the artist passed away. Leon Spilliart did not gain wide popularity outside his own country. He was a rather modest person, led a secluded lifestyle, devoting himself to creativity.

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