Publications, Reviews, Magazines...   :   QUADRUM - International Review of Modern Art (1956-1966)

“ QUADRUM was the organ of the reasonably adventurous art lover and the institutional representatives of what Arthur Danto, in a 1963 article, baptized the 'art world.' Especially in the early years, abstract art was the magazine's battle horse, and by that we must understand non-figurative art. In the beginning, it primarily sang the praises of lyrical abstraction, even though some first-hour protagonists, like Pierre Janlet, were more drawn to its geometric variant. It was a time of exacerbated power struggles between Paris and New York competing to set the tone, although the international success of Abstract Expressionism and, later, Pop art and Minimalism, allowed New York to establish itself as the center of contemporary art right from the inception of QUADRUM. The magazine's editors wished to see a revival of the interwar artistic avant-garde, which had been cast into oblivion during the hostilities and the preceding years of an unfavorable political climate. It is within this context that at least the initial phase of the magazine must be interpreted.” (Frederik Leen)

“ In May 1956, a new quadrilingual modern art review was launched, distributed simultaneously in Belgium, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, and the United States. An initiative of the brilliant Belgian publisher Ernst Goldschmidt, along with Pierre Janlet and Robert Giron, QUADRUM covered international art news for ten years, publishing two issues per year, and secured the collaboration of professors and experts from the largest museums and universities in Europe and the United States.
The first issue appeared in 1956, a time when the memory of the Second World War was still very vivid for many. Europe had spent the previous decade rebuilding itself; it needed to rediscover Dada, Surrealism, Abstract art, as well as the art born in the United States, which had not suffered the war on its soil. At the time of the major exhibition 50 Years of Modern Art presented as part of the 1958 World's Fair, in a climate of rediscovering avant-gardes that had been cast into oblivion by fascist regimes, QUADRUM contributed to making Brussels a crossroads for post-war global creation. ”

(Excerpt from texts published on the occasion of the exhibition dedicated to the review QUADRUM, organized by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, presented in Brussels from November 2007 to April 2008).