Guy Schraenen

Galerie Kontakt

In 1965 Schraenen founded the Galerie Kontakt in Antwerp, which existed until 1978. In the beginning the program was aimed to the field of Lyrical Abstraction and Constructivism. The gallery presented: Bram Bogart, Lucio Fontana, fr:René Guiette, Jef Geys, Paul Van Hoeydonck, Georges Mathieu, Georges Vantongerloo, Constructivism art in Belgium etc. Later the program shifted to activities related to the new avant-garde movements such as Visual poetry, Sound poetry, Sound art, Conceptual art, Fluxus, Mail art and artists' books.

Guy Schraenen éditeur

In 1973 Schraenen founded the publishing house Guy Schraenen éditeur (Antwerp / Paris). Until 1978 he published artists' books, magazines, catalogues, ephemera, postcards, multiples, posters, records and films. Until 1978, he published artists' books, magazines, catalogues, ephemera, postcards, multiples, posters, films and sound works. The affiliated Printing Workshop functioned as a very early artist residence where artists were invited to explore, conceive and realize, among others, silkscreens, small offset publications and mimeographed works. For many artists it was the occasion to publish a book for the first time. mong the artists who collaborated with Guy Schraenen were Eduard Bal, Bram Bogard, Ulises Carrión, Lourdes Castro, Henri Chopin, Jean Degottex, Mirtha Dermisache, Peter Downsbrough, François Dufrêne, Brion Gysin, Bernard Heidsieck, Françoise Janicot, Jiří Kolář, Bernard Villers and many others.

Archive for Small Press & Communication

In 1974, Guy Schraenen founded the Archive for Small Press & Communication (A.S.P.C.) (Antwerp, Belgium) together with Anne Marsily. The aim was "...to collect and preserve all types of art documentation, emanating principally from artists’ initiatives and covering all fields the contemporary artist is active in." The collection includes artists' publications mainly from the 1960s to the 1980s. These are visual works, sound works, text works and artists' writings. All together it is a fund of thousands of documents representing the works of several hundreds of artists from more than 25 countries. The A.S.P.C. is as well an artistic as a political statement. Although most of the artists are recognized now by a larger public, in this time they were neglected by the traditional art world. Therefore their preservation remains an important contribution to the knowledge of the international contemporary art scene of the 1960s and 1970s.

Connected with the A.S.P.C. was an uninterrupted activity in its own Archive Space in which Schraenen organised exhibitions, lectures, concerts etc. Also in his publications and his radio program I am an artist, he gave public access to the gathered works. All this happened on individual base and in collaboration with artists’ run spaces, museums and cultural centres in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Hungary, the Soviet Union, etc. In this frame he developed a close relationship with the Latin American and the Eastern Europe art scene. The Polish artist Józef Robakowski commented Schraenen's engagement in Poland in the 1970s: "Our contacts were broken mechanically. Letters were controlled and all parcels destroyed. But soon Guy Schraenen from Antwerp, an independent publisher, helped us and started to cooperate with us very actively. This contact was extremly [sic] helpful as far as the exchange of information beyond official, institutionalized channels was concerned."

In 1999, the A.S.P.C. - a fund of ca. 50,000 documents - was acquired by the Museum Weserburg with support by the city of Bremen (Germany). It forms the cadre of the Research Centre for Artists’ Publications, a collaboration between the University of Bremen and the Museum Weserburg Bremen, "the largest and most outstanding collection of published artworks in Europe."

A Museum within a Museum

In 1989, Guy Schraenen became the founding curator of the artists' publication collection A Museum within a Museum in the Museum Weserburg Bremen, the first autonomous department of its kind: "Never before artists' books were regarded as art works and presented equally alongside paintings, sculptures, graphics, environments and installations in a museum"

For many years Schraenen has been responsible for the collections and exhibitions of artists’ publications in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Fundação de Serralves in Porto, the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), the International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana (MGLC) and other institutions.

Solo exhibitions

Thematical exhibitions

Further watching