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Around anti-peinture, final exhibition of G58 and large survey of the ‘new tendencies’. With works by: Armando, Stanley Brouwn, Enrico Castellani, Maurice De Clercq, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Herman de Vries, Wybrand Ganzevoort, Vic Gentils, Hermann Goepfert, Gerhard von Graevenitz, Jan Henderikse, Jochen Hiltmann, Walter Leblanc, Julio Le Parc, Piero Manzoni, Morellet, Henk Peeters, Martial Raysse, Jan Schoonhoven, Paul Van Hoeydonck,... With an insert by Boy & Erik Stappaerts.
Antwerp 1958. In the shadow of an ever growing and increasingly profitable world-class port, there lies a city that is both sleepy and threadbare, where art and culture are way down the municipal agenda. The meeting between Lode Craeybeckx, a mayor with a broader vision, and a group of young artists urgently determined to have their work seen, leads to the founding of G58 Hessenhuis. Paradox : the attic of the city’s oldest port building, with 1000 m² of surface area, becomes Europe’s largest exhibition space devoted to contemporary art. Until the curtain falls in 1962, this ‘forest of beams’ is active as a bustling point of intersection for a new network.
The five instalments of new art in antwerp 1958-1962 do not mean to offer a comprehensive survey of the subject. Rather, they evoke characteristic moments and fi gures from that brief but fulsome era. They constitute a serial of coloured tales with debatable accents. And, what is more: following the archeologists’ customary practice, parts of the ‘excavation site’ have been left untouched for the benefi t of those who eventually follow in their footsteps.

A young Belgian artist whose work, in terms of content and form, refers to what was then new art, will take integral part in each of the exhibition’s five instalments.