Les XX

also: Les Vingt · The Twenty

movement 1883-1893 Belgium

Les XX (Les Vingt, 'The Twenty') was a society of twenty Belgian painters, sculptors, and designers founded in Brussels in 1883 by the lawyer and impresario Octave Maus. It grew out of frustration with the conservative Antwerp Salon and the bureaucracy of the artists' club L'Essor - the rejection of James Ensor's The Oyster Eater was the last straw. For a decade the group staged annual exhibitions with no jury and no prizes, each year inviting twenty international artists: Pissarro, Monet, Seurat, Gauguin, Cézanne, and a Van Gogh retrospective all showed in Brussels, while Debussy and Fauré were heard in concert and Mallarmé lectured. The society had no single style - it was a meeting place for realism, Symbolism, and Neo-Impressionism - and in 1893 it dissolved into La Libre Esthétique.

Lead image of the Wikipedia article "Les XX".
Lead image of the Wikipedia article "Les XX".Public domain · source

Defining characteristics

  • Realist, Symbolist, and Neo-Impressionist work exhibited side by side, with no house style imposed
  • Divisionist brushwork - small strokes of pure color - among members such as van Rysselberghe and Lemmen
  • Symbolist subjects: dream, desire, and the femme fatale in moody, muted tones (Khnopff)
  • Bright, saturated color and grotesque, mask-like figures in Ensor's carnival scenes
  • Decorative arts shown alongside painting and sculpture, integrating minor and major arts

Key figures

  • Octave Maus (1856-1919) — Lawyer and critic who founded the society and organized its annual exhibitions
  • James Ensor (1860-1949) — Founding member whose rejected Oyster Eater helped trigger the society's creation
  • Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921) — Founding member; Symbolist painter of isolation, desire, and the femme fatale
  • Théo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926) — Founding member who brought Neo-Impressionist divisionism to Belgian painting
  • Anna Boch (1848-1926) — The society's only woman member (1885-1893), painter and pioneering collector

Example works

Sources

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