The Verbeke Foundation

The Verbeke Foundation Art Park is one of the most famous art collections of Western Europe and is located in the small village of Kemzeke, near Antwerp. Culture, nature and ecology are brought together in the park. The park houses an impressive collection of modern art.

The park was opened on June 1, 2007 by collectors Gert and Karl Verbeke. It is located on 12 hectares of open space and 20,000 square meters of closed area. The Verbeke Foundation is one of the largest private collections of contemporary art in Europe.

In the early 1990s, Gert and Carla Verbeke began collecting art. After an initial interest in abstract painting, the collection was reoriented to collages and complexes, mostly by Belgian artists. In recent years, the collection has expanded to Contemporary Art and Bio Art.

The collection includes collages of the avant-garde period, for example, Paul Jostin, Georges Gerby, Michel Sufort. In addition, it consists of collages of surrealists such as Marcel Marien, Robert and Roger Willems. The collection contains some "Collage Partages" collages created by two artists: Paul Pia and Annie Deby, Christian Mogens Ballet, Jean Duprois or even Serge Vanderkam and Joseph Noiret.

Every year the park is visited by 20,000 tourists. “Our exhibition spaces are not an oasis. Our presentation is incomplete, in motion, unpolished, contradictory, messy, complex, inharmonious, alive as the world outside the walls of the museum, says Geert Verbeke.