Martin Gayford

Strange, sinister and very Belgian: Léon Spilliaert at the Royal Academy reviewed

Plus: a pioneering little show devoted to Piranesi’s fizzy sketches at the British Museum

issue 29 February 2020
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  • Léon Spilliaert

    Royal Academy, until 25 May

  • French Impressions: prints from Manet to Cézanne; Piranesi drawings: visions of antiquity

    British Museum, until 9 August

The strange and faintly sinister works of the Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert have been compared — not unreasonably — to those of many writers, Edgar Allan Poe among them. But as I walked round the Spilliaert exhibition at the Royal Academy, it was not any of these that came to my mind.

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