The sixth annual exhibition of Les XX opened in Brussels on 2 February 1889, according to the dated poster reproduced on the French page for the group. Les XX was an invitation-based Belgian avant-garde circle founded by Octave Maus, and its salons helped connect Belgian artists with the most experimental painters working in France. The 1889 exhibition is especially notable because Paul Gauguin and Georges Seurat were among the invited artists; the English Les XX page identifies Gauguin's Vision After the Sermon as included, while the French Gauguin exhibition page calls his 1889 Salon des XX presentation his first important exhibition of works. The show placed Gauguin, Seurat, Pissarro, Caillebotte, Cezanne, Luce, and Cross within a Brussels setting that actively cultivated international modernism.
The exhibition helped make Brussels a major relay point between Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, and later European avant-gardes.
