Les XX

The Société des Vingt, short Les XX or Les Vingt, German The XX or The Twenty was a 1883 or 1884 (January), founded association of Belgian or living in Belgium artists, including Fernand Khnopff, Théo van Rysselberghe, James Ensor and the brother and sister Anna and Eugène Boch. Secretary, the lawyer Octave Maus; the group had no chairman. The aim of, Vingtisten ' was to promote new and unconventional art. In addition to concerts and readings, the group in Brussels organized an annual exhibition, to which the members invited an equal number of other participants. They were of no particular aesthetic theory or tendency, but were all equally open to innovative trends.

The merit of the XX is that they recognized the importance of a whole series of trend-setting, later famous artists early on and this provided a forum. Among the guests were among the first exhibition in 1884 Auguste Rodin, John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler. 1887 was invited among others, Georges Seurat, also Berthe Morisot and Camille Pissarro, 1890, the young Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec, who had never taken part in a major exhibition. In the same year, six paintings by Vincent van Gogh were seen, whose painting The Red Vineyard found a purchaser on this occasion. It is the only documented sale of an image from the mature period of the painter in his lifetime.

The excited by the Société des Vingt exchange helped that Brussels has developed in these years an important center of modern art.