Some places contradict your expectations the moment you turn in through the gate, and Verbeke Foundation in Kemzeke is one of them. Twelve hectares of grassland, old farm and industrial buildings, and scattered between them, art that couldn't care less about the usual white cube.

Soft Architecture: The Power of Textile

What caught us first was a small, carefully considered presentation of textile art at the Verbeke Foundation, as part of 'She's Gone', work by Lieva Bostoen, Corine Toussein and Veerle Dupont, three women who in the 1970s helped move weaving far beyond the decorative wall hanging. The exhibition places textile in a much broader history, presenting it as material, technique and autonomous artistic medium. Bostoen moved from knotting into weaving after discovering the work of Magdalena Abakanowicz, and built, on a self made loom, open, organic compositions in flax, wool, cotton, sisal and jute. Her works were conceived as sculptures rather than tapestries, with the material itself determining their form and movement. Corine Toussein was self taught, beginning with embroidery before moving into crochet and rug knotting, the technique through which she developed her distinctive wool reliefs. The circle became a recurring motif in her work. Her work was exhibited internationally, including in San Francisco, Cologne, Münster, Łódź, Warsaw and Paris, and in 1978 an extensive selection was shown at De Warande in Turnhout. Dupont pushed material experimentation further still, working with wool, artificial silk, plastic, reed and wood to create woven wall reliefs of remarkable physical presence. For us, the exhibition felt like uncovering a whole, long underappreciated generation, textile as autonomous, sculptural art, unmoored from craft, and still, remarkably, undervalued.

Assembling a Movement

From there we walked into the building devoted to the Verbeke Foundation's collection of collages and assemblages, the core of a collection of around six thousand twentieth century works. Only part of it is on permanent display, and the selection changes over time. The collection is centred largely on Belgian artists, tracing a line through the country's avant garde, surrealist and abstract movements, from the early twentieth century onwards.

Among the artists represented are Guy Mees, Vic Gentils, Kurt Lewy and André Bogaert, alongside names such as Jan Fabre and Luc Deleu. Guy Mees takes us back to the Antwerp avant garde of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1960 he was one of the signatories of the manifesto of the Nieuwe Vlaamse School, alongside artists including Vic Gentils, Jan Dries, Jef Verheyen and Engelbert Van Anderlecht. Vic Gentils, another central figure in that Antwerp scene, represented Belgium at the 1964 Venice Biennale. Kurt Lewy offers a different trajectory, arriving in Brussels in 1935 after fleeing Germany and later becoming associated with the Art Abstrait group and the development of Belgian geometric abstraction.

Monumental Control in the Open Air

Sculptures and installations appear between trees, grass, water and the old industrial buildings, sometimes blending into the landscape, sometimes sharply interrupting it. There is no strict separation between art and its surroundings, and the changing landscape becomes part of the experience. The garden brings together geometric and constructivist sculpture, kinetic works, monumental installations and more organic forms. Among them is Mark Verstockt, whose geometric language developed around fundamental forms such as the square, circle and triangle. His 'Meander' brings that precise, abstract vocabulary into the landscape. Hilde Van Sumere, one of the key figures in Belgian constructivist sculpture, is represented here too, alongside Pol Spilliaert, whose work we had previously encountered in connection with his former artist's residence in Sint-Kruis, the 1968 modernist house by architect Rik Scherpereel.

The Verbeke Foundation is a real outsider among Belgian museums, and that is exactly what makes it worth the trip. It is part sculpture park, part museum, part experiment, and you never quite know what you will find around the next corner. For anyone interested in modernism, contemporary art or simply places that do things differently, put it on your list.

→  Mark Verstockt in the Maison Moderniste Collection

→  Pol Spilliaert in the Maison Moderniste Collection