This exhibition in Antwerp has many charms, not least for the synaesthetes among us (11 April–30 August). It takes its title from a letter written by the Belgian painter Jules Schmalzigaug to fellow Futurist Umberto Boccioni in 1914, in which Schmalzigaug, praising Rubens’s The Adoration of the Magi (1624), wrote: ‘I know of no Impressionist painting with red that sings as the red in King Melchior’s cloak.’ Taking this observation as their starting point, the curators present paintings by Schmalzigaug, James Ensor and Rik Wouters that, though disparate in composition and subject matter, are united by their vivid use of red. Earlier artists are included too: the exhibition begins with Rubens’s The Holy Family with the Parrot (1614–33) and goes on to include work by 19th-century artists such as Adolphe Monticelli and Henri De Braekeleer, whose sparing but effective use of vermilion had a clear influence on Wouters’s modernist interiors.
Find out more from KMSKA’s website.
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