Discover the collection: art on the move
Discover the collection
art on the move
M’s collection comprises some 58,000 artworks – which makes it impossible to display them all in our rooms. Fortunately, there are solutions. Making them digitally accessible – stay tuned – is one of them, exchanging them with other museums and cultural houses is another. Which is something we enjoy. Pieces from our collection often grace (inter)national exhibitions. And this autumn is no different. Read more about a selection of the loans and discover where they’ll be travelling to. Will you join them?
Narrative Management. Le Corbusier, Nature Morte au Siphon, 1928
Dieter Durinck, 2020, Cera collection at M Leuven
For the past few years, Dieter Durinck (b. 1983) has been making bootlegs, not of music but of artworks. His Bootleg Paintings are a growing group of reinterpreted paintings by famous and less well-known masters from art history. Durinck changes their format and executes them in fluorescent green, which alludes to TV footage of the Gulf War. He thus presents not only a tribute to his predecessors, but also to photographer Thomas Ruff, who references the same war in his work. Equally, Durinck questions his own painting and our art-historical view. In spring 2023, more than 40 of the Bootleg Paintings were on display during his solo exhibition at Kunsthal Gent, in the city where he lives and works. One of these came from the Cera Collection at M: Narrative Management, a tribute to a painting by the French-Swiss architect and artist, Le Corbusier (1887-1965).
‘Narrative Management. Le Corbusier, Nature Morte au Siphon, 1928’, Dieter Durinck, 2020, Cera-collectie bij M Leuven © Dieter Durinck
Scenes from the Passion of Christ
Unknown Brabant painter, c. 1470-1490, Collection M Leuven
In this wonderful painting from an unknown Brabant painter, the episodes of Christ’s suffering and death on the cross merge into one another. This cartoonlike format is very rare: there are just three other known examples of it, including one by Hans Memling. Jerusalem, where all this unfolds, looks like a West-European late-medieval city and many of the figures in it are wearing 15th-century clothing. These familiar visual stimuli made it easier for the viewers to feel involved in what is happening to Jesus. That was also the intention of a narrative painting of this kind: to suffer alongside the Saviour of mankind in his darkest hours. We were able to purchase Scenes from the Passion of Christ in 1998 thanks to the generous support of the friends of the museum, amongst others. Until 2024 the panel will be on display at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille as part of the collection presentation: there it is replacing the two panels by Dieric Bouts that M has on loan.
‘Taferelen uit de passie van Christus’, Onbekende Brabantse schilder, ca. 1470-1490, Collectie M Leuven, bron: artinflanders.be © Dominique Provost
Meat Stand I (1793-1796)
Marina Pinsky, 2017, Flemish Community Collection at M Leuven
Artist Marina Pinsky (b. 1986) explores historical subjects and places. She makes stand-alone artworks from the details she uncovers. A good example is her Meat Stands. The Flemish Community has loaned the first of these ensembles to M. Meat Stands was created in 2017 for Pinsky’s solo exhibition at the Vleeshal Arts Centre in the Dutch town of Middelburg. She translated the history of the building into an installation of metal market stalls full of fake meats fashioned from plastic and textiles, as well as enlarged coins. Pinsky thus alludes to the trading history of Middelburg, once a prosperous port town, but also to visual traditions from painting, the theatre and to the age-old spectacle of market selling. Meat Stand I (1793-1796) will be on display until 18 February 2024 in the exhibition This Is Us at Z33 in Hasselt, together with a further eleven artworks from the Cera Collection and the Flemish Community Collection at M.
‘Meat Stand I (1793-1796)’, Marina Pinsky, 2017, Collectie Vlaamse Gemeenschap bij M Leuven © Marina Pinsky
Maria Lactans
Attributed to Brioloto de Balneo, c. 1200-1230, Flemish Community Collection at M Leuven
In 2021, M had the opportunity to add a genuine Flemish masterpiece to the collection, entrusted to the museum by the Flemish community: a 13th-century Maria Lactans [Nursing Madonna]. This depiction of the Virgin Mary nursing is attributed to the Italian sculptor Brioloto de Balneo (b. 1225?). This artist was active in around 1200 in Verona, where with his studio he made his mark on local architecture and sculpture. The virgin breastfeeding the infant Jesus was one of the most popular depictions of Mary in Christian art. Brioloto treated the theme with the detachment typical of his era: the figure of Mary is sitting rather woodenly on her throne and staring straight ahead. Yet this is also a tender and intimate moment between mother and child. Brioloto’s Maria [Madonna] is on loan to Antwerp’s MAS until 25 February 2024, where the 20th anniversary of the Masterpieces Decree is being celebrated with the exhibition: Rare and Indispensable: Masterpieces from Flemish Collections.
Virgin and Child
Maria Faydherbe, c. 1600-1625, Collection M Leuven
Maria Faydherbe (1587-1643) is one of the earliest known female sculptors in European art history. The Mechelen-born Maria hailed from a family of famous artists, including her nephew Lucas Faydherbe, a pupil of Rubens. She strove for recognition in a male-dominated world, and therefore signed her work explicitly. In 2016, this statue of Mary in boxwood, and signed by the artist, was donated to M. Mary wears a long robe, a headscarf and sandals, the infant Jesus a loincloth. The two figures are gazing at one another. There is a comparable, larger alabaster sculpture of the Virgin and Child, also by Maria Faydherbe, in the V&A collection in London. The two ‘Virgins’ were exhibited together in 2022-2023 at the Alabaster exhibition at M. This autumn, M will be loaning its example to Hamburg’s Bucerius Kunst Forum, for the exhibition Ingenious Women: Women Artists and their Companions, which runs until 28 January 2024.
‘Maria met kind’, Maria Faydherbe, ca. 1600-1625, Collectie M Leuven, bron: artinflanders.be © Cedric Verhelst
Rain or Shine
Tina Gillen, 2013, Flemish Community Collection at M Leuven
Artist Tina Gillen (b. 1972) lives and works in Brussels but maintains a strong connection with her native country of Luxemburg. In 2022, she was selected to represent Luxemburg at the 59th Venice Biennale. Moreover, Luxemburg’s Konschtal Esch Museum will be presenting Flying Mercury, a major solo exhibition of her work, until 12 November 2023. Gillen’s painting Rain or Shine, from the Flemish Community Collection at M, is included in the exhibition. It is a characteristic work that clearly shows the direction her practice has taken in recent years. Tina Gillen deploys her substantial image database, which includes photography and other visual documentation, to build figurative and abstract images that explore the interplay of dimensions between three-dimensional space and the flat plane.
‘Rain or Shine’, Tina Gillen, 2013, Collectie Vlaamse Gemeenschap bij M Leuven © Tina Gillen
