Georges Minne was born in 1866. From 1882 to 1884, Minne studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. At the age of twenty, he made his first sculptures: ‘Couple entwined' and ‘Mother weeping her dead child' (1886, private collection). Finding them devoid of academicism, his teacher Louis Van Biesbroeck expressed his dissatisfaction. However, Minne's innovative character, his uneasy nature, and a sensitivity towards mysticism attracted the attention and admiration of Maurice Maeterlinck. The two formed a friendship as well as with the circle of symbolist poets like Grégoire Le Roy, Charles van Lerberghe and Emile Verhaeren, for whom he illustrated several of their works from 1888. The eloquence of silence fills the early work of MaeterDream and reality: collections of the Musée d'Orsay, cat. Exp., Kobé, Musée Municipal de Kobé, June 19-August 29, 1999. Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art, September 14-December 12, 1999, Tokyo, Nihon Keizai Schlimbun, 1999, p. 251. Leo Van Puyvelde, George Minne, Editions des Cahiers de Belgique, Brussels, 1930, p. 35, 57. André de Ridder, Georges Minne, De Sikkel for the Ministry of Public Education, Antwerp, 1947, p.8-9...