Comic Art Museum - Brussels

Scattered across the millions of panels and magazine pages collected by Alain Van Passen, there is a secret and long forgotten history of vibrant, surrealist, breath-taking, even ‘visionary’ images. The Belgian collector was active from the earliest days of the comics clubs which campaigned for the recognition of comics as an art form worthy of study and critique. His pristine collection, built over decades of searching and exchanging, offers us unprecedented insight into the diverse trajectories of twentieth century popular publishing. Focusing on comics magazines published between 1935 and 1965, this exhibition reveals a lost world of French and Belgian comics and their translations and reworkings of American, British and Italian imports, across the genres of humour, science fiction, history and adventure. Shedding light on often forgotten or little-known artists, the exhibition traces a counter history of French-language comics in which new stars will be born and images long forgotten unveiled for the 2020s.    

Curators: Hugo Frey & Maaheen Ahmed, in collaboration with Jan Baetens, Benoît Crucifix, Felipe Muhr and Eva Van de Wiele.

Partners: Faculty Library of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University and Leuven University Press.