George Minne

Minne presented for the first time in an exhibition in 1989 at the tri-annual Salon of Ghent, a year later with Les XX in Brussels. From 1890 on, he exhibited annually, first at Les XX, then later La Libre Esthétique in Brussels. The artist achieved international renown only with his participation in the Wiener Secession in 1900, where he showed, among others, the Kneeling Youth and the Fountain with Kneeling Youths from 1898, the highpoint in the oeuvre of the artist and also in the symbolist sculpture of the fin de siècle.

Minne is less known as a graphic artist. Yet, his illustrations for the works of the Belgian symbolist writers Grégoire Le Roy (1862-1941), Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) and Emile Verhaeren (1855-1916) belong to the most significant examples of Belgian book design of the end of the 19th Century.

After 1900, Minne seems to have not been able to find the same creative drive as before. He still took on numerous assignments for portraits and memorial drawings and made replicas from previously made sculptures, in particular the Kneeling Youth. Around 1910 Minne went through a period of stylistic crisis. He abandoned every form of style and radically chose a realistic approach from his model. After World War I, the theme of Mother and Child loomed largely and Minne took up again a number of sculptures from his earlier period, such as Mother Grieving over her Dead Child.