Wouter De Vleeschouwer
Letter from Yves De Smet to Amédée Cortier, 03.06.1969

On June 3, 1969, the Ghent artist Yves De Smet, twenty-three years old at that time, wrote a letter to his older colleague Amédée Cortier in which he confronted him with an important choice: either he chose to continue working with the Richard Foncke Gallery, or he joined his “cortier-ghent-plus-kern”-idea. Plus-Kern refers to the gallery that De Smet and his wife Jenny Van Driessche opened a few months earlier in Ghent. Since Foncke and Cortier were close friends since the start of their studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1936, this was not an easy decision to make for the latter…

The Letters Project

In 2022-2023, KIOSK together with the research group Ghent, playing field of the visual arts (1957-1987), will focus on letters from or to people from Ghent, or concerning the Ghent art scene. The letters are selected for their content, but also for their form.

For a whole year, the group will present a different letter every week in KIOSK, and will highlight its context or the questions it raises. During these presentations, the letter (or a facsimile) will be shown, possibly with other artefacts that are mentioned or that can clarify its meaning.

Ghent, playing field of the visual arts (1957-1987) consists of Naninga Lens, Sofie Frederix, Wouter De Vleeschouwer, Koen Brams and Godart Bakkers. For The Letters Project the group is reinforced by Simon Delobel and some guests.