About
MASEREEL is a centre for contemporary art that combines an artist-oriented artistic programme with an international residency programme for artists and critics, with a special focus on printed matter at large.
Contact
MASEREEL
Masereeldijk 5
2460 Kasterlee (BE)
info[at]masereel[dot]art
+32 (0) 14 85 22 52
History
MASEREEL is a centre for contemporary art that combines an artist-oriented artistic programme with an international residency programme for artists and critics, with a special focus on printed matter at large.
As part of our artistic activity, we produce and present contemporary visual art, bring out artist publications and editions, and organize events such as artist talks and an arts festival.
Equally fundamental is our international residency programme, which over the past decades has grown into one of the most challenging and inspiring environments for artists and critics to explore printed matter in all its facets or to integrate it within a broader practice. Located in a wooded area and equipped with a dynamic printmaking studio, the emphasis is on development, creation and dialogue.
Our iconic main building, with its open, circular workshop on the ground floor, was designed between 1965 and 1967 by the architects Lou Jansen and Rudi Schiltz as a studio and home for Fons Mertens, a young, visionary artist who collected old printing presses at a time when offset printing was replacing lithography in industrial printing works. Whether Fons Mertens – the pioneer of what is now MASEREEL – was fascinated, like the architect Lou Jansen, by the construction and design of windmills is impossible to say. But the fact is that the unique architecture of our main building is remarkable, to say the least. The building is dome-shaped, with a central round core and, spread around it over three floors, circular rooms that can be subdivided into sub-areas.
In 1972, a few years after the centre was completed, Fons Mertens managed to persuade the Belgian government, in the person of then Minister of Culture Frans Van Mechelen, to take over the infrastructure. This was soon followed by the construction of ten individual A-shaped artist studios, arranged around an open courtyard, and a caretaker’s house. The complex was named the ‘Rijkscentrum voor Grafische Kunsten Frans Masereel’ (Frans Masereel National Centre for Graphic Arts) in memory of Frans Masereel, one of the most important Belgian artists of the first half of the twentieth century, who had died on 3 January 1972. In addition to his widely distributed woodcuts – which made him the precursor of the graphic novel – Frans Masereel is also an important international reference because of his social criticism and his pacifism.
Around 1976–77, two smaller, also dome-shaped studios were built on our site. Originally intended as screen printing studios, one of these gems currently serves as a multipurpose workplace, and the other as an etching studio.
In the spring of 2019, MASEREEL opened a new, star-shaped wing, designed by Japanese architect Hideyuki Nakayama and Ido Avissar of the Paris-based firm LIST. This extension now houses the digital studio, the collection and the exhibition space. In this short video, Hideyuki Nakayama explains how the project came about.
The festive celebration of our 50th anniversary in 2022 coincided with the successful redesign of our outdoor space. A detailed retrospective of our rich history was presented in the form of an extensive research publication: Diepdruk, Vlakdruk, Hoogdruk, Doordruk, compiled by the research group KB45 at Ghent University.
Whereas until early 2025 our original name was shortened to Frans Masereel Centrum, since 10 March 2025 our new name is MASEREEL. With this change, we embrace our rich history and the name by which we are generally known. At the same time, we make it clear that we are not a knowledge centre about visual artist Frans Masereel, nor do we see ourselves as an institute. MASEREEL is an eternal start-up centred on the artist – as both a creator and a person.
Choosing MASEREEL as our new name is the final piece in our recent repositioning as an arts centre with a twofold core mission (artistic and residential) – but it is certainly not an end point. Starting in 2025, for example, MASEREEL is going to organize every two years the international biennial RHIZOMA on and around the MASEREEL site. We are also working behind the scenes to make our extensive collection available to researchers and from 2026 residents will be able to stay in a brand-new artist pavilion.
