Willy Schlobach was a German-Belgian painter. In 1884, he was one of the founders of Les XX

Les XX

Les XX was a group of twenty Belgian painters, designers and sculptors, formed in 1883 by the Brussels lawyer, publisher, and entrepreneur Octave Maus. For ten years 'Les Vingt' , as they called themselves, held an annual exhibition of their art; each year twenty international artists were also...

, a group of artists known for their hazy atmospheric paintings. By the end of the 1880s his work was increasingly characterized by neo-impressionistic

Neo-impressionism

Neo-impressionism was coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Seurat’s greatest masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, marked the beginning of this movement when it first made its appearance at an exhibition...

 influences, but after 1894 he returned to his earlier impressionist style.

While he spent his youth in Belgium, both his parents and wife were German. During his "Belgian" period, he befriended the Belgian painters James Ensor

James Ensor

James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor was a Flemish-Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for almost his entire life...

 and Willy Finch when all three attended the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts

Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts

The Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels is an art school, founded in 1711.The faculty and alumni of ARBA include some of the most famous names in Belgian painting, sculpture, and architecture: James Ensor, Rene Magritte, and Paul Delvaux...

 in Brussels. This period came to an end soon after Germany invaded Belgium during the onset of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

as his pro-German sympathies clashed with the rising anti-German sentiment. He then moved to Germany, where he remained until his death in 1951.