George Minne and Maurice Maeterlinck were ‘symmetrical spirits’, who were seen as innovators in their time in the international arts centres.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent presents The World of Minne and Maeterlinck, an exhibition on view until 19 February 2012.

This exhibition wants to highlight the work of two remarkable artists who were close friends and who would subsequently, each in their own field, exercise great influence on the European Symbolist movement. During their studies in Ghent, both George Minne and Maurice Maeterlinck were imbued with a similar appetite for life. Maeterlinck got to know the young Minne as ‘a primitive almost, a wonderful minus habens’. He later would describe him as ‘the great portrayer of sorrow’. Minne, for his part, said that sometimes it was not clear whether he or Maurice Maeterlinck had come up with an idea given that they were such kindred spirits.
The exhibition situates George Minne and Maurice Maeterlinck in their early years in the frame of Ghent’s social and artistic circles in the late nineteenth century, an environment that also left its mark on the poets Grégoire Le Roy, Georges Rodenbach and Karel Van de Woestijne. The exhibition then evolves in two directions. On the one hand, it discusses the relationship between Maurice Maeterlinck and the visual art of his era. Maeterlinck’s characteristic language was not only reflected in the output of the music and theatre world, but especially in the visual arts. This section includes works by artists who have directly inspired Maeterlinck (such as Odilon Redon) and especially of artists who, in turn, were influenced by his ideas, poems and plays (including Fernand Khnopff, Maurice Denis and Léon Spilliaert).
The other part of the exhibition follows George Minne as he continued to hone his art. Minne moved to Brussels in 1895 and lived there until 1899, when he settled in Sint-Martens-Latem. During this period Minne would create the elegant sculptures which earned him such an important place in European Art Nouveau. He influenced such artists as Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka.

This is the second time that the Ghent museum devotes an exhibition to George Minne. In 1982, the retrospective ‘George Minne and art around 1900’ brought about an international rehabilitation of this highly original sculptor. The current exhibition incorporates new insights into the art of George Minne. Because both artists complete one another so beautifully, the Maeterlinck year in Ghent is an excellent opportunity to bring together a very specific selection of Symbolist works of art, inspired by the main themes in the work of George Minne and Maurice Maeterlinck. – www.mskgent.be

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