12th
Today in 1921: Fernand Khnopff dies at 63
We’ve seen this Belgian Symbolist artist’s work at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Royal Museum of Brussels. He lived in Bruges and Brussels, but exhibited all over Europe during his lifetime.
Khnopff believed in the genius of the individual artist and was treated as one in England and Northern Europe. He influenced the now-famous Gustav Klimt.
Think of Symbolism as the philosophically and artistically sophisticated ancestor of today’s goths. They used dark, mystical symbols to evoke something beyond ordinary ideas and sentiments. Khnopff was particularly fascinated with a dualist view of women: intimate yet unattainable; cruel yet angelic. Typically, Symbolists weren’t easy to live with.
Khnopff’s contributions to the first exhibition of the Vienna Secession nourished a movement that resulted in extraordinary works of architecture that we’ve seen all over Europe.
