Ossip Zadkine

Sixty years after his death, KMSKA pays tribute to sculptor Ossip Zadkine (Vitebsk 1888 - Paris 1967). Although Zadkine gained world fame when living in the Paris of the roaring twenties, his career found an early foothold in Belgium. ‘Les Belges étaient mes premiers amateurs,’ he wrote himself. In 1933 he got his first retrospective not in France, but in Brussels, at the Palace of Fine Arts (now BOZAR). It was an Antwerp ship owner of CMB who brought his work back to Europe from New York after WWII. The Jewish artist had sought a safer home there during the war. After his participation in the first Middelheim Biennale, he suggested to Lode Craeybeckx the idea of a permanent outdoor exhibit. Thus, together with Henry Moore, Ossip Zadkine became an advisor to the then new Middelheim Museum, which celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2025.

Ossip Zadkine was a tireless, unquantifiable and prolific artist with an impressive oeuvre. Today we count more than 600 sculptures, over 750 gouaches and drawings, and some 200 lithographs and etchings.

In this exhibition, we show that multifaceted production by Zadkine, complemented by works by his wife Valentine Prax and by Belgian contemporaries and pupils. The KMSKA owns nine of his works, including the expressive The Misery of Job, which Zadkine himself donated to the museum. His visual language, full of inner strength and emotion, is given room to breathe again in this exhibition.

Tickets will be available soon.