A Red that Sings
Masterpieces by Ensor, Wouters en Schmalzigaug

James Ensor, Rik Wouters and Jules Schmalzigaug are known as Belgium's Big Three modern colour artists for good reason. Theirs are illustrious names, each of whom sought to transcend the soft colour palette of the Impressionists in their own way. For them, the power of a renewed, post-Impressionist composition lay precisely in the play of rich pigments. In A Red that Sings, the KMSKA explores their vermilion reds, intense blues and bright yellows, and the role that this fresh visual language played within the greater artistic picture. 

The fact that the museum houses the largest collection of the three masters provides an excellent starting point for this original collection presentation in the Ensor Rooms. Complemented by a selection of targeted top loans, the exhibition aims to teach the public to look at modern art following the lively rhythm of colour.

It was no coincidence that Schmalzigaug spoke of the singing red that he and his fellow Futurists wanted to reintroduce. He looked back to the red of Rubens' paintings. According to Schmalzigaug, it was only in Ensor's work that this fullness of colour was fully expressed. Ensor composed his tableaux, the painter believed, with “unlikely chords of colour”. 

Wouters was also convinced that red always demands attention and generates emotion. He wrote lyrically about the “vermilion things crawling over the fabrics and objects” in the early modern paintings of Antwerp artist Henri De Braekeleer. In Wouters' compositions, too, bright red touches determine the direction of the gaze.