The Belgian artist Jules Schmalzigaug (1882–1917) was born and raised in a well-to-do milieu in fin-de-siècle Antwerp. He travelled in Italy and Germany and lived for a while in Paris before eventually settling in Venice, where he swiftly aligned himself with a group of young avant-garde artists committed to challenging a nostalgic ‘passéism’. Schmalzigaug was the first Belgian to participate in the Italian Futurist movement. Following the outbreak of the First World War, he continued his intriguing experiments with light and colour in the Netherlands. At the age of thirty-four, the artist committed suicide, bringing an abrupt end to a promising career.

The work of Jules Schmalzigaug was rediscovered in 1980 and several of his works were included in the major Futurismo & Futurismi retrospective held at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 1986. Through exhibitions in Brussels, Ghent and Ostend, he was belatedly recognized in his native country too as one of the key Belgian precursors of the modernist avant-garde.

It is hoped that this ambitious new publication, consisting of two volumes in a slipcase, will contribute to the international appreciation that Jules Schmalzigaug deserves. The first volume, authored by Peter J.H. Pauwels, is a monograph that sets the artist’s work in the context of the European artistic movements of Schmalzigaug’s time. The second comprises the first catalogue raisonné of his oeuvre in its entirety.