KMSKA LATE - Curator Tour - Ossip Zadkine and Belgium

Discover the exhibition Ossip Zadkine and Belgium with curator Véronique Van Passel as your guide. Sixty years after his passing, the KMSKA pays tribute to sculptor Ossip Zadkine. The exhibition reveals how he developed into a tireless and singular artist, distinguished by a visual language imbued with inner strength and emotion.

Curator Véronique Van Passel guides you through the exhibition, explaining why Zadkine, who rose to international fame in the Paris of the Roaring Twenties, found his earliest admirers in Belgium: « Les Belges étaient mes premiers amateurs » (“The Belgians were my first admirers”). Along the way, you will discover why his first retrospective, in 1933, took place not in France but at the Palace of Fine Arts in Brussels, now known as BOZAR.

You will learn how, after the Second World War, an Antwerp shipowner from the CMB shipping company helped bring Zadkine’s work back to Europe from New York, and how the artist, alongside Henry Moore, advised on the creation of the Middelheim Museum. His work is presented alongside pieces by his wife, Valentine Prax, as well as works by Belgian contemporaries and students. The exhibition also features the expressive The Misery of Job, one of nine works by the artist in the KMSKA collection, all donated by Zadkine himself. His oeuvre comprises more than 600 sculptures, over 750 gouaches and drawings, and around 200 lithographs and etchings.

By providing both historical context and the stories behind the artworks, this tour offers a fresh perspective on Zadkine and his enduring connection to Belgium.