Belgian Comics Strip Center
Rue des Sables 20
1000 Brussels
Tel.: + 32 (0)2 219 19 80
Fax: + 32 (0)2 219 23 76
visit(arrobe)comicscenter.net
This area on the ground floor is accessible free of charge and pays tribute to the great Art Nouveau architect and master by sketching the history of Waucquez Warehouse which opened in 1906. On show is a stone weighing several tonnes, the final remnant of the famous Maison du Peuple (Volkshuis), a masterpiece of Horta's which sadly no longer exists.
All you ever wanted to know about the journey a comic strip artist has to make, from concept to shop. Eye-catcher: the Plunk, an established merchandising hero in the Comic Strip Centre long before his adventures were committed to paper in a series published by Dupuis.
In the middle ages, the most precious relics constituted the “treasure” of a religious order, of an abbey or a church. They legitimized the foundation and the existence of the order itself, of the congregation or the community. In this room, the Belgian Comic Strip Center's collection of original documents (sketches, studies, pencil drawings, colourings, full pages, covers, manuscripts, etc. ), deposited by the authors or acquired by the Belgian Comic Strip Center, is exhibited in rotation. They literally make up the “treasure” of the Comic Strip Centre.
This takes the visitor on a grand journey through the imagination of the pioneers of Belgian comics. From Hergé (Tintin, 1929) to Roba (Boule et Bill, 1959), passing by Jijé, Jacobs, Vandersteen or elsewhere Franquin, Peyo or Morris. It represents the first half of a voyage through sixty years of creativity, through the imagination of the pioneers.
Each day, in each genre, each style and each language, from classic to contemporary, from fantasy to satire, from autobiography over crime until heroic fantasy, new works are published in albums thus enriching our extraordinary comic heritage. This exhibition room, The Gallery, is dedicated to those works that make up today’s landscape in comics.
At a time when Belgium is holding the presidency of the European Union, the Belgian Comic Centre is delighting the general public with an exceptional selection of original comic strips extracted from so many major works produced by European comic strip artists and writers in the last one hundred years.
This exhibition, initiated by Isabelle, André Franquin’s daughter, and with the support of the artist Frédéric Jannin is neither an exhaustive record nor an informative account of La Bande des Quatre. Rather, it is a declaration of love.
Tove Jansson’s Dreamworld
Popularised around the world through comic strips, the Moomin series is above all a rich and sensitive body of comic strip work, created by Tove Jansson (1914-2001), an essential Finnish illustrator and author.