Jules Schmalzigaug (Belgian, 1882-1917)

Jules Schmalzigaug has emerged as a unique figure among early 20th Century avant-garde Belgian artists in his adoption of the ideals of Italian Futurism. His early death has resulted in a rich but comparatively small body of work. His visit to the 1912 Futurist exhibition at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris was a seminal moment in his aesthetic development. He then travelled to Venice where he worked for a period in 1912 and again in 1913. His paintings testify to the strong influence of Severini's interpretation of Divisionism and the expressive abstractions of Boccioni's Stati d'animo. In his own work, he uses light to generate form and colour simultaneously in his attempt to capture movement in two dimensions. The subject of the dancer was one favoured by the Futurists as it combined dynamic movement, the beauty of the human figure and an exhilarating form of popular culture all in one. The treatment of this theme in Het dynamische van de dans from 1913 is an explosion of brushstrokes, heavy with colour and light, generating and dividing geometrical, intertwined volumes. A completely abstract 'dance of light' is rendered through a composition of bright prisms, in continuous movement and quick metamorphosis.

Dutch artist Willem Paerels (1878-1962) was among the first to recognize Schmalzigaug's talent, as he lauded his innovations in L'Art Libre in 1919, two years after his untimely death, 'un nom encore ignoré dans l'histoire de la peinture; celui d'un artiste, d'un veritable artiste, trop tôt disparu, mort en pleine production à trente ans; celui d'un chercheur indefatigable et d'un novateur. Schmalzigaug est un des rares artistes qui ouvrent une fenêtre nouvelle sur l'infini des possibilités; un de ceux qui nous font une fois de plus et mieux comprendre que les formules en peintures sont absurdes'.