Bernaerts is honoured to offer in April a small but exceptional collection of early prints and illustrated correspondence by Tracey Emin, one of the leading ladies in contemporary art. In the early 1980s, as a young art student in the circles of the theatre group ‘Horse + Bamboo’, she met Dutch artist Adriaan Krabbendam. A platonic relationship and especially intense correspondence unfolds between these two searching souls. Emin, then ‘Traci’, illustrates her letters, cards and envelopes with monotypes, woodcuts, watercolours…. The tone is glowing, yearning, but always poetic in tone, even as she recounts the simple events of her life. In this very intense period of her life, just before her admission to the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and her breakthrough on the international stage, we follow an artist who is searching very hard to find her own way, using Krabbendam and especially their correspondence/contact as an outlet and touchboard to help the often high emotions find their trajectory.

What both men are most praised for to this day is the establishment in the early 1920s of the gallery and the eponymous magazine ‘Sélection’. Where Van Hecke will be the face of the magazine and the gallery, De Ridder will be the silent force behind the scenes. In the meantime, he was also appointed professor of statistics and finance at the Rijksuniversiteit in Ghent, and the Rijkshandelshogeschool and the Koloniale Hogeschool in Antwerp. From that period, we offer, among other things, Léon Spilliaert‘s original design for the cover of ‘Sélection’, along with the contract and correspondence between De Ridder/ Sélection and Spilliaert. One of the most startling pieces will be the correspondence between Theo Van Doesburg and De Ridder, also from the same period. Dozens of original and unprecedented photos of De Ridder/ Van Hecke and their entourage also surfaced, taken by Robert De Smet and others.

De Ridder also had a very high-end art collection himself. The latest witnesses to this will also be presented to the general public at that auction, such as Floris Jespers’ important 1925 work ‘De Kommunicant’ (sic).

With this collection auction, it will become clear that André de Ridder played a key role in our ‘roaring twenties’ art world and was often (co-)responsible for the many international contacts that gave our magazines and galleries their international name and fame.