Vision
In the Vlaeykensgang's private spaces, Axel and his wife May created a home that blended seamlessly with an art and antiques business that became the company it is today.
The formative experiences in the 1970s embody key elements of the company’s vision that exist in everything we do:
- Respect for architecture and the purity of proportions
- Passion for discovery and the endless search for beauty and quality
- On-going quest to uncover harmony between the past, present, and future
- Spirit of openness to share experiences, knowledge, and inspiration
- Timeless philosophy for living with art
The Axel Vervoordt Company is active in the fields of art and interiors & design. From the start, it's always been a family-led business — Axel, May, and their sons Boris and Dick are active in the daily operations with our team of about 100 collaborators.
During the 50 years that followed the beginning in Antwerp, the company relocated twice. In 1986, the family and company moved to the Castle of ‘s-Gravenwezel. In 1999, the company moved to its current headquarters at Kanaal in Wijnegem, a converted industrial site that blends a cultural, commercial, and residential community to create a new home for art, design, and architecture.
The 50-year anniversary offers a chance to review important memories from our history and share those with you. We begin with recent milestones and look back to the beginning. Each moment symbolises aspects of our evolving vision that’ve allowed the company to occupy a singular presence in our many diverse activities.
The installations and exhibition spaces rely on the strength of the existing industrial architecture and were designed to give new purpose to the old buildings. A James Turrell light piece, "Red Shift", from 1995 is permanently installed in a disused chapel. Works by Marina Abramovic, Otto Bol, Kimsooja, Tatsuo Miyajima, Otto Piene, Takis, and Angel Vergara are installed at the base of several converted grain silos. These are in addition to a permanent installation by Anish Kapoor titled, "At the Edge of the World", which Axel refers to as the Kanaal site's "beating heart".
Timed for the grand opening was "Henro I", the inaugural exhibition by the Axel & May Vervoordt Foundation at Kanaal in spaces named, Henro and Ma-Ka. The spaces were designed in collaboration with architect and frequent collaborator, Tatsuro Miki, and are based on the concept of sacred proportions. Axel curated the exhibition, "Henro I" to initiate a path through the foundation's highlights featuring work from ZERO and Gutai movements.
The Axel Vervoordt Gallery also opened three newly built or renovated spaces. These exhibitions featured work by El Anatsui, Saburo Murakami, and Lucia Bru in the Patio Gallery, Terrace Gallery, and Escher Building.
Over a period of 10 years, the complete list of exhibitions included:
- Artempo: Where Time Becomes Art (2007)
- Academia: Qui es-tu? (2008, Paris)
- In-Finitum (2009)
- TRA: Edge of Becoming (2011)
- Tàpies: The Eye of the Artist (2013)
- Proportio (2015)
- Intuition (2017)
To create and curate each exhibition involved months, and in some cases years, of study and research to uncover revelations spanning centuries in the history of art. The exhibitions' titles relate to themes in the Vervoordt Foundation's art collection, but in a larger sense, how the company looks at art.
For example, the exhibition, Artempo, arose from a belief in the spirit of natural materials. Old materials have a profound energy that’s related to the passage of time, and an objects patina reflects the role of time as an artist. To live surrounded by objects from all time periods is to share this connection.
A desire to share knowledge and explore evolving ways of looking at art became the start of ten thrilling years of exhibitions at Palazzo Fortuny. Hundreds of works of art were installed in each exhibition by dozens of artists, and the number of visitors numbered in the tens of thousands. Significant partnerships were made with contemporary artists, foundations, museums, galleries, and curators to benefit the public at-large.
The process of producing the exhibitions gave rise to the formation of the Axel & May Vervoordt Foundation in 2008, which in turn, led to the inaugural exhibition "Henro I" at Kanaal, as well as Axel’s role in curating exhibitions at other global institutions.
Every exhibition was a next step in my life and for our company. The curatorial team’s conversations often started with a question or idea. This process led us to deeper and more searching questions. Each theme gave us a new source of knowledge. Becoming a curator was a way to share knowledge with others.
The Kanaal’s initial development included installing the company’s offices and studios. This was quickly followed by the acquisition of permanent art installations, such as Anish Kapoor’s, At the Edge of the World. A plan was conceived to make Kanaal a cultural and residential center, a process that began in the early 2000s.
For more information, visit www.kanaal.be
Plans to transform the site relied on the original buildings’ character and history to give the whole area an authentic, new lease of life. This is a central trait of many of our projects. Dick Vervoordt led an ambitious plan to combine the efforts of three architectural teams — Bogdan & Van Broeck, Coussée & Goris, Stéphane Beel — along with landscape designer Michel Desvigne. Quality of life was a top priority and the plans were conceived to adapt the design from the inside outwards, converting old buildings into new living and working spaces.
In 2017, construction was officially completed. The Kanaal is home to nearly 100 private apartments with public spaces, including a restaurant, surrounding courtyards, and gardens.
Sharing the environment with residents, businesses, and visitors, the company added workshops, studios, an auditorium, as well as permanent art installations and temporary exhibition spaces for the Axel Vervoordt Gallery.
Kanaal is a dream that took years to realise. Looking back, you can see connections to the Vlaeykensgang and castle — building a bridge from history to the future. The Kanaal is writing its own story. It’s center for art with a life that’s evolving.
Our company has always followed a path of discovery and knowledge through art.
The gallery expanded to Asia in 2014 with a space in central Hong Kong in the Entertainment Building.
In 2017, the Antwerp gallery moved to a new space at Kanaal, opening with a monumental retrospective of Kazuo Shiraga.
The gallery’s early program included a specialty in post-war and contemporary art with a specific focus on art from Europe, Japan, and Korea, particularly art from the ZERO and Gutai movements. An emphasis on Dansaekhwa followed, as the gallery’s program and participation in global art fairs grew in prominence and its roster of artists expanded.
Art offers joy and endless inspiration. Artists force us to look at the world in new ways. Seeing works by gallery artists in in major institutions—like the Tate and Guggenheim—is validating, but even more, it ensures that they will be shared with a wide audience in the context of passionate scholarship.
The vision represents more than four decades of working and living with art. We’re engaged in a search for the universal in artistic expression.
Most notably, the foundation was responsible for producing a series of exhibitions at Palazzo Fortuny in Venice from 2007-2017.
Through his work as a curator and the foundation's president, Axel's goal is to share his views on the transformative qualities of art. The family strongly believes in art's inherent power to change lives and enhance perspectives on the past, present, and future. These views are evident in the company’s and gallery’s work as well.
Built over a period of four decades, the foundation's art collection includes over 700 works and ranges from ancient archaeology to contemporary art. The Foundation was built on the family’s search to find bridges for artistic expression between East and West, with a special interest in the concept of the void, the gestures of artistic creation, and questions of space and time.
The foundation’s work focusses on the collective human experience and seeing the harmony of life through art. Each artwork invites us to hold up a mirror to ourselves, to help us find new ways forward in the world.
Inspiratum produces monthly concerts throughout the year, in addition to organising annual membership trips throughout the world to attend performances, visit museums, private art collections, and engage with architecture.
Inspiratum also fosters artistic patronage and charity work. Members generously support young musicians in a variety of ways to boost their careers and provide them with a platform for their talent. Funds raised help to support promising musicians through scholarships, the organisation of masterclasses, and by providing performance opportunities. Inspiratum also writes out commissions, provides CD funding, and other necessary productional support. The group is guided by a committee of key figures in the classical and contemporary music world.
The idea is simple: Inspiratum exists to share the timeless art of music. My passion for music started in childhood when I listened to my mother and her friends playing piano and singing during long afternoons. I understand now that I inherited joy from those days. Once you have that, you want to share it.
It’s not an exhibition. The works live here.
To live with art is to allow art to live with you. This is one the company’s important guiding philosophies, which is expressed in all of our work.
Anish is an artist with the ability to give body to the void — to use material to show us what immateriality is. He’s a sculptor of space. His works allow us the chance to contemplate infinity by creating a vision of full emptiness.
The work is an immense dome lined with an intense, deep red pigment. As visitors stand underneath the dome and look at the shape and colour overhead, one has the sensation that you cannot feel or see the beginning or end of the space. It feels limitless — like a glimpse of infinity.
The idea is to make an object which is not an object, to make a hole in space, to make something which does not actually exist. Even more, the extraordinary appearance — loved and feared — of a piece of void, at once finite and infinite, reactivates the symbolic contact between inside and outside, earth and heaven, male and female, active and passive, conceptual and physical, thus renewing the process of knowing.
Following an extensive two-year renovation, the family and company relocated to the castle's grounds and side buildings, which are located twenty-five minutes east of Antwerp.
We feel a responsibility to create living spaces that inspire emotions of serenity and reflection, with the precious comforts of home.
The castle was built in the 12th century and is a living evolution of all of the company’s activities, and in particular, the Vervoordt's singular taste in art and design.
The rooms reflect many periods and styles, and yet there is continuity as the atmosphere flows from one room to the next.
Each room has its own character, purpose, and conveys distinct personality. Over the years, the family has hosted thousands of guests as a way of showing the emotion inherent in their work, which, as Axel often specifies, is difficult to describe in words.
Axel’s lifelong study of proportion and sacred geometry were helpful immediately after acquiring the castle. Close friends like Jef Verheyen and Professor Bernard Lietaer initially gave Axel books and lessons on the subjects and this knowledge was put to valuable use during the renovation process. Axel was able to give body to his evolving ideas regarding proportion in the series exhibitions at the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice as well, particularly with Proportio in 2015.
We respect the centuries-old architecture, and yet we create essential space for contemporary art. Throughout every change at the castle we’ve wanted to make an approachable, warm environment that’s free from ostentation and connected to nature. Everything we choose to surround ourselves with adds an extra dimension to the universal qualities of life
Design is not only answering questions. It’s about searching for the right questions. In the process, you learn more about yourself just by asking.
In 1982, Axel was a 35-year-old dealer. He spent many months and even years acquiring art and objects of the highest quality. These included sixteenth-century Zen screens, a rare Gothic oak table, an ornate baroque corner cupboard, an Antwerp cabinet with tortoise shell and carved boxwood figures, royal silver and seventeenth-century Córdoba leather walls.
For his first stand, Axel faced a conceptual dilemma: how to present various exceptional works from disparate time periods and styles. He chose to eliminate superficial decorative elements and present each piece in an authentic way to reveal its intrinsic qualities. This “as-it-is” philosophy has been central throughout many of the company’s activities over time.
I peeled my stand back to the essentials. I removed the carpet to show the concrete floor. I took away a ceiling to reveal the structural beams of the Grand Palais overhead. I didn’t know the word “loft” yet, but that’s what my first presentation in Paris became—a raw, industrial space with high ceilings, bare floors, great furniture, and art… Everything was shown in an eclectic, casual way. It was exactly how I wanted it to be.
The presentation was a revelation in style for many visitors. A growing list of clients and friends followed. These included museums and curators from the J. Paul Getty Museum, and others, as well as Valentino, Hubert de Givenchy, the Rothschild family, Rudolf Nureyev, Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge, John McLaughlin, Marielle and Katia Labèque, and many significant collectors.
The success of the first fair in Paris was followed again in 1984 with the presentation of the Hatcher collection of blue-and-white Ming porcelain. The porcelain was lost in a shipwreck in the mid-1600s and had been discovered in the early 1980s by Captain Michael Hatcher. Thousands of pieces were placed on auction at Christie’s in Amsterdam. The Vervoordt company acquired a majority that was available and first showed the porcelain at the China Fair in London and then in Paris, where many pieces were acquired by museums and collectors.
In a tower-like stand with specifically-designed proportions, Axel exhibited the porcelain at the 1984 Paris Biennale, which was received with sensational success. These activities contributed to the growing prominence of the company and the international list of clients expanded to America and Asia.
The Hatcher cargo changed my mind about what Ming porcelain could be. Each piece had a unique design that looked like action painting — so free and modern. Circles, details, and flourishes had individual character. Even in the smallest details, I saw the freedom of the artist’s hand.
From the minute I stepped foot on the Vlaeykensgang’s cobblestone paths and discovered its hidden courtyards, it was love at first sight. It felt like a secret world. I quickly learned it was neighborhood where artists Anthony Van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens were born. My plan was to renovate the houses and create a home for my business. By the time I was 13, I already started collecting beautiful objects and traveling alone to England seeking knowledge and treasures. I always wanted to live surrounded by things I love in a personal space where I could invite clients into my world.
In the 1970s, Axel’s art and antiques business began in the private home in the Vlaeykensgang he shared with May. His expertise as a dealer of objects, art, and rare furniture expanded quickly in those early years. It was complemented by May’s sensibilities for colours, textures, food, flowers, hospitality and the heart of creating a home.
Clients were attracted to the Vervoordt way of life and eventually requested interior architecture services. This service became a natural evolution for future growth. Before long, Axel and May began transforming properties with a sense of distilled harmony for which they lived their own life. This service is the foundation of our work today.
I’ve always wanted to live surrounded by the things I love.
Our practice includes completing many interior design projects — both small and large scale — per year all over the world. The full-service team includes talented experts with knowledge in art history, architecture, design, project management, restoration, logistics, and many other disciplines.
The spaces where people share private experiences with family and friends should restore and give energy. Above all, home is an enlightening space that makes people happy. Often, creating a home means searching for this emotion in every decision that’s made.
We create homes that feel as if they’ve always existed. A trademark is the ability to approach every project with a spirit of evolution. Ideas evolve along with our clients. We challenge each other to understand the project and deliver the highest results. It’s this collaboration that creates a friendship and it’s a reason why many of clients are friends for life.
Our work is widely documented in books and publications, which shows characteristics of our projects: a distinctive visual language that blends art, furniture, objects, and materials that span history and geographies into a unified creative alchemy.
We create many original furniture pieces in our workshops, in addition to providing expert restoration services. Our Home Collection includes sofas, chairs, tables, furniture and objects.
The art of creating value is giving a better place to things. We’re engaged in a process to help art, objects, furniture, antiques, and our original designs find their true home. Discovery has always been the most important aspect for us.
