Ladies and Gentlemen,

Mr Governor,

Mr Staroste,

.

Thank you very much for having invited me to be involved in this international conference on Henry van de Velde. It is a pleasure and an honour to be here today, especially as this is also my first visit to the voivodship of Lubuskie.

Henry van de Velde, about whom you will certainly hear a lot today, is one of the great Belgian artists and architects of modern times. But of course you know that already. He died on the 25 th of October 1957 - soon to be 50 years, and actually when I was just one year old. Even though he died in Switserland, he was buried in Tervuren, next to his wife who died several years before him.

Van de Velde came from the city of Antwerp, where he studied at the academy of arts. As I am myself from Antwerp, I feel very proud indeed to be able to come here myself and to represent Belgium and Antwerp at this conference.

Over the centuries, Antwerp has been a great centre of culture. Artists, such as Rubens, Van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens, came from there. On the contemporary art-scene Antwerp is equally an important breeding-ground, with artists such as Panamarenko.

And Belgium, as you know, was an active center for Art Nouveau - with people like Victor Horta - whose house one can still visit in Brussels. Van de Velde was a young contemporary of Horta, even though I read somewhere that there were artistic differences of opinion between the two - artistic differences which led Van de Velde to work more in Germany.

The title of this conference, "Art without Borders", is well-chosen. Indeed, Henry van de Velde worked in several European countries, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Switzerland. Great Britain also comes into the picture as the artist was greatly influenced by the 'arts and crafts - movement'. Van de Velde, who lived through both World War I and World War II, actually had to move house and home a couple of times because of these terrible events.

However now, in a new era, with Poland since 17 years finally, and firmly, in the fold of free European society, his art stretches as a bond all the way from Belgium to Poland. In this new Europe, "Art without Borders", means exactly that : art which travels freely all over Europe without being hindered by borders nor by wars. The discovery of Van de Veldes work here in Trzebiechow by Mr Erwin Bockhorn - von der Bank, is very significant and I would like to congratulate him. My congratulations equally go to all so those who have been working on this architectural heritage which is of European importance, and who are taking care of thes valuable interiors.

I would like to once again congratulate the organizers of this event, which is a truly European one and I am looking forward to hearing the different distinguished experts who will now take the floor.

 

Thank you very much.