1867 -1953 · Leuven, Brussels, Rome and Glasgow

Ethereal bodies, cosmic visions and Platonic philosophy make Jean Delville one of the most ambitious leaders of Belgian symbolism.

Jean Delville was born in Louvain in 1867 and trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels with Jean-François Portaels. His realistic beginnings quickly gave way to symbolist research nourished by Wagner, poetry, esotericism, theosophy and Platonic philosophy. Painter, designer, poet and theorist, Delville never separated images from an intellectual program. He participated in the Salons de la Rose-Croix in Paris, founded Pour l'Art in 1892 then organized the first idealist art fair in 1896. He participated in the Salons de la Rose-Croix in Paris, founded Pour l'Art in 1892 then organized the first idealist art fair in 1896. The Treasures of Satan, painted in 1895, showed bodies drawn into an underwater world dominated by sprawling power. Sensual beauty becomes the place there from a fight between matter, desire and spiritual aspiration. Winner of the Belgian Prix de Rome in 1895, Delville stayed in Italy. Plato's School, completed in 1898, transposes the philosophical community into a vast composition of idealized bodies. Intended for the Sorbonne but never installed, the work offers a monumental synthesis of its ideal: physical beauty must lead to knowledge. The Love of Souls, dated 1900, unites a male figure and a female figure in an ascending movement of yellow and blue curves; the embrace represents less two individuals than a spiritual reconciliation of opposites. The Man-God places the body of Christ at the center of humanity called to transform. From 1900 to 1906, Delville taught in Glasgow, then in Brussels until 1937. He also created large public sets and published several texts on the spiritual mission of art. Died in Forest in 1953, he left a work where virtuosity of drawing, monumental ambition and idealistic belief form an inseparable whole. The "Jean Delville" selection notably compares Plato's School and Satan's Treasures. His reading favors drawing.

Delville treats the body as spiritual energy: line elevates it, color frees it from gravity and myth directs it towards higher knowledge.