For twenty years, Jan Walravens closely followed the artistic scene. He wrote about it with passion, leaving behind a clear and personal picture of his time, an art world in reconstruction after the Second World War. Shortly after the Liberation in 1944, he started working for the liberal newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws. He reported on art and culture for a wide audience in more than 900 articles.

In the 1950s, Walravens expanded his field of work. He brought art to radio and television and noted personal observations in the column ‘De Vijfde kolom’ (The Fifth Column) in the monthly magazine De Periscoop. Foreign magazines asked him for insightful articles on Belgian art, and in the Netherlands he published in De Groene Amsterdammer, among others.
Much of his best work appeared in De Vlaamse Gids, a literary and cultural magazine of which he was one of the driving forces for many years and where he kept his finger on the pulse of contemporary art at home and abroad. In the 1960s, when the Brussels gallery scene was flourishing, he was also actively involved in supporting artists with advice and assistance.

The art scene in Belgium from Cobra (1948–1951) is buzzing. Experimentation is central; Jan Walravens is at the forefront. While the artists of the Jeune Peinture belge evolve towards abstraction, Cobra never completely abandons figuration.

When Cobra disappears in 1951, the focus shifts to geometry, with artists such as Jo Delahaut, Maurice Boel and Jan Saverys uniting in the Art Abstrait circle. On the other hand, things were less restrained, as expressed in lyrical abstraction, so-called informal art or tachism, with artists such as Maurice Wyckaert, Roger Raveel, Jan Burssens and Serge Vandercam. Walravens is intuitively more attracted to the dynamism and colour of the ‘warm’ lyrical corner than to the rather ‘cold’ geometric abstraction.

During this period, he acted as a commentator and intermediary for artists at new exhibition venues in Brussels and the provinces, such as Galerie Saint-Laurent, le Zodiaque, Celbeton, Taptoe and the beautiful little room at Galerie Aujourd’hui, on the second floor of the Palace of Fine Arts, where his friend Hugo Claus exhibited in 1959.

The World Exhibition sparked an artistic revival on the Belgian art scene. Walravens wrote a series of articles and essays about it. However, a few young artists were missing from the line-up. They did get a platform and Walravens’ support at the G58 art collective, during alternative and high-profile exhibitions at the Hessenhuis in Antwerp.

Around 1960, artists working in the informal style finally break through and abstract artists who were previously part of the Jeune Peinture belge gain general recognition. Figurative painters and sculptors also move towards abstraction. Walravens made a warm plea for them. As a respected and influential critic, he played an important mediating role for many artists, including as an advisor and jury member for awards. Walravens has a broad perspective, but he has reservations about new movements such as American pop art and European nouveau réalisme. He closely follows the exhibitions in Ghent by Forum and the 1964 exhibition on Figuration/Defiguration by Karel Geirlandt. In the latest art, he does discern an important general trend: the return of the human figure, which rightly removes the contrast between figurative and abstract.

Walravens seeks depth and contributes to syntheses of figurative and abstract movements. The focus is not only on innovation, but also on the place of modern art in a broader tradition. In his overview essays, such as Contemporary Painting in Belgium, new names come together with older masters. The best-known but most contested overview work he collaborates on is that of Michel Seuphor, Abstract Painting in Flanders (1963), for which he writes 41 lemmas.

Throughout his career as a critic, Walravens was particularly committed to Felix De Boeck. A second monograph was published posthumously. He continued to appreciate De Boeck’s work “as a generous expression of the energy of life and a lucid expression of all that is human”, despite his personal aversion to religion.

Walravens also brought De Boeck’s contemporaries, the first generation of avant-gardists, into the spotlight, such as Victor Servranckx, Jozef Peeters and Frans Masereel. From the surrealist movement, he was friends with Geert van Bruaene, owner of the Goudblommeke in Papier, and E.L.T. Mesens. In 1961, he interviewed Magritte in Ghent for the Association for the Museum of Contemporary Art.

In his overview articles, Walravens always returns to one theme: the contrast between figurative and non-figurative art, which he believes is no longer relevant. Even in abstract art, the artist often starts from reality, which is distorted, simplified or abstracted. In figurative art, the artist can show reality in a personal way, and colour and form play an important role together. In abstract art, everything revolves around pure, absolute colour. Both approaches have their intrinsic power.

Radio and television opened new windows onto the world of art. Walravens began making radio reports for public broadcasting in 1945 and continued to do so until the end of his career. He discussed exhibitions, artists and art movements for programmes such as Kunstkaleidoscoop (Art Kaleidoscope) and De Zeven Kunsten (The Seven Arts). For television, he wrote scripts for studio and exhibition visits that were featured in the youth programmes Aangename kennismaking (Pleased to Meet You) and Hou je van… (Do You Like).

We see the pedagogue in Walravens, but also the lover of poetry, film and theatre with a vivid imagination. In his scripts, he zooms in on the artist at work, plays with fast-forwarding images, and lets the painting merge into the face of its creator, the person behind the canvas. It is a metaphor for the way in which he makes art tangible, playful and alive for us as viewers.

During 45-65, the atrium space in the museum will be transformed into an editorial floor from Walravens’ time. It is the ideal place for visitors to browse through material from the VRT archive and the Letterenhuis. It is also the perfect place for De Wondere Pluim, a unique writing event for primary school children from the Brussels suburbs who will be visiting during the exhibition to give free rein to their imagination and creativity.

In 1961, Jan Walravens met René Magritte and engaged him in a lengthy conversation. This was in preparation for an interview en plein public for the Association for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent. On 7 December 1961, the public broadcaster devoted an episode of the cultural programme Actueel to an interview between the surrealist and Walravens, who had been associated with the BRT since 1945 and brought exhibitions, artists and art movements into people’s living rooms.

After a search in the VRT archive, these images were found. VRT archivist Thomas Eyskens calls it a major discovery, and probably the only television interview in the VRT archive. The interview is being digitised for the exhibition 45-65.

Pierre Alechinsky – Karel Appel – Gaston Bertrand – Anne Bonnet – Jan Burssens – Hugo Claus – Julien Coulommier – Jan Cox – Felix De Boeck – Jan Delandtsheer – Jean Dubuffet – Jean-Jacques Gailliard – Asger Jorn – Françoise Lambilliote – Guillaume Leunens – René Magritte – Pol Mara – Lode Matthijs – Rudolf Meerbergen – Marc Mendelson – Luc Peire – Roger Raveel – Reinhoud – Jan Saverys – Victor Servranckx – Michel Seuphor – Rik Slabbinck – Jan Vaerten – Englebert Van Anderlecht – Camiel Van Breedam – Guy Vandenbranden – Lucien Van den Driessche – Serge Vandercam – Paul Van Hoeydonck – Louis Van Lint – Frans Walravens – Florent Welles – Maurice Wyckaert