George Minne 1866-1941

George Minne initially trained in architecture at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Ghent from 1882 to 1884, before turning to engraving and sculpture. In 1886, he became friends with the poet Maurice Maeterlinck, who introduced him to the literary circle of the Symbolists. By 1890, he was invited to exhibit with the Les XX group in Brussels, and the following year he visited Auguste Rodin in Paris, who encouraged him in his artistic path.

It was during this period that Minne began his first sculptural experiments focused on movement, the extreme twisting of the body, and interlaced forms, recalling the concerns of Rodin’s L’Âge d’Airain. After participating in the Salon de la Rose+Croix in 1892 and illustrating Émile Verhaeren’s Les Villages illusoires in 1895, he resumed sculpture studies in 1896 at the Académie of Brussels under Charles van der Stappen. There, he began developing the theme of the Kneeling Youth, which would bring him significant recognition.

In 1898, his friend Valerius De Saedeleer invited him to join him in the village of Sint-Martens-Latem, where he had settled. A year later, Minne moved there permanently and became the leading figure of the first Latem School, a group of artists inspired by the Flemish primitives and favoring religious subjects imbued with mysticism. The sculptor’s austere, Gothic-inspired figures, executed with angular lines, were highly praised at the Munich, Berlin, and Vienna Secessions by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Oskar Kokoschka.