Antwerp to Manhattan and back: the archive and career of Raymond Barion

As part of its mission to support artists and their heirs in managing archives, the CKV embarked on an example project in May 2025 that focuses on artists’ archives since 1970. This research has identified various cases over the past year, concentrating mainly on artists who played a role in the Belgian arts scene in the 1970s and 1980s. The story of Raymond Barion (°1946, Valkenburg) is the first in this series. The Antwerp-based Dutchman is a figure who has received little attention in general; nevertheless, his career and idiosyncratic paintings have left meaningful traces on the artistic landscape.

Raymond Barion is probably not the first name that comes to mind as one of the key figures on the Antwerp arts scene from the seventies onwards, let alone the Belgian scene. However, Barion attracted attention during his time at the Nationaal Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten (National Higher Institute for Fine Arts), a post-academic training course at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, to which, incidentally, he was admitted without a previous qualification in the arts. This was an unusual decision that immediately emphasises his talent. Furthermore, Barion decided after three years to combine this study programme with art history at Ghent University, expressing the need for more theoretical information. In Antwerp, the young Barion devoted his time to sculpture, creating works in a style strongly reminiscent of the abstract-figurative visual language of Henry Moore (1898-1986). These works were evidently well received, because Barion received a bursary in 1969 to spend a few months in Carrara, Italy, and in 1971 he won the prestigious Rembrandt Bugatti Prize. At Ghent University, Barion deepened his theoretical knowledge of sculpture with a thesis that explored assemblage technique and the lost-wax casting method with work by contemporary artists as case studies. He interviewed Alic Cavaliere (1926-1998), Wessel Couzijn (1912-1984), Roel D’Haese (1921-1996) and Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) for his thesis.

In 1975, Barion began teaching theory at the art school Akademie voor Kunst en Vormgeving St. Joost in Breda (now St. Joost School of Art & Design), giving classes in art history and social orientation. He also organised a film programme and frequently invited contemporary artists to give guest lectures. International names including A.R. Penck (1939-2017), Jörg Immendorff (1945-2007), Anna and Bernard Blume (1936-2020; 1937-2011), Luc Deleu (°1944, Duffel) of T.O.P. office, Thomas Bayrle (°1937, Berlin) and Panamarenko (1940-2019) were among those artists, and they stayed at Barion’s home. Incidentally, Barion had already met Panamarenko: he had allowed Panamarenko to use the lower storey of his studio for a while to create the sculpture Magic Carpet (1978).

By the end of the 1970s, Barion had stopped making sculptures almost entirely and moved more towards drawing and painting. An important influence on the drawings and canvases from this period was Delirious New York (1978) by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas (°1944, Rotterdam), a book that analyses the development of Manhattan and describes it as a laboratory for modern architecture and urban experiments. Barion did in fact visit the Big Apple several times in the early eighties, partly because his wife, Grażyna Mielech (°1955, Warsaw), was working as an intern for the American architect Peter (°1932, Newark). The couple visited buildings including the Downtown Athletic Club that Koolhaas had described with such lyricism. Barion also met prominent figures from the world of American architecture in Eisenman’s entourage, such as Jeffrey Kipnis (°1951, Georgia) and John Hejduk (1929-2000). Eisenman also introduced Barion to the art critic Hal Foster (°1955, Seattle), with whom he spent an entire day visiting exhibitions. In 1984, Barion participated in a group exhibition at the Freidus/Ordover Gallery in New York, but he believes that the sterility and synthetic colour palette of his canvases, which were derived from a philosophical reflection on space and architecture, conflicted with the neo-expressionist style of the Neue Wilde that dominated the art world at that time. Incidentally, this interpretation is confirmed in a letter from the architecture critic Jeffrey Kipnis that Barion has kept in his archive. Although Barion and his wife considered a definitive move to New York, it turned out to be impossible due to a lack of job security and the need to care for his mother in Belgium. Consequently, the international contacts that he had established there remained mere encounters rather than a foundation on which to build an international career. However, Barion’s archive does contain traces that offer an outline of this impressive international network, even though he was never able to exploit it fully.

In Antwerp, Barion had a solo exhibition at the International Cultural Centre on the Meir in 1987. The exhibition was curated by the art historian Glenn Van Looy (1947-2022), who also worked at the academy in Breda at the time. Although Barion tried to keep his artistic practice separate from his activities as a lecturer in theoretical subjects, Van Looy got to know his work in a solo exhibition that Barion presented at Tilburg University in 1986. Remarkably, the solo exhibition at the ICC was Barion’s last individual exhibition for more than 25 years, and he did not participate in any more than five group exhibitions during that period either. It was only in 2014 that Barion exhibited work again, at Extra City, also in Antwerp. That exhibition mainly included works from the 1980s and 1990s, plus one new piece. This long silence has much to do with Barion’s limited production: the airbrush technique he uses is time-consuming, which means it takes him months to complete a single painting. In fact, his oeuvre only includes about thirty canvases.

Barion has not had a ‘traditional career’ as an artist; instead, he has found his own balance between secure employment and artistic freedom. His path shows that building a worthy career in the art world does not always mean constant visibility or productivity. In practice, moreover, this means that many artists combine their artistic activity with another profession, such that artistic production is only one part of a broader professional life. As such, Barion’s contribution cannot be evaluated by his artistic output in works of art alone; it can also be measured by the many lectures by international artists that he organised and the countless classes he taught at the academy in Breda. With his relatively modest oeuvre, Barion embodies an artistry that does not rely on constant visibility. Instead, it has attracted attention in waves of rediscovery.

Barion’s archive is significant for both art historians and architecture historians. It offers insight into his limited but coherent oeuvre, the documentation of exhibitions and the networks in which he moved. Besides that, it illustrates how Barion’s practice developed at the intersection of architecture and the visual arts. In the example project focusing on artists’ archives since the 1970s, the CKV has already taken a few steps towards mapping Raymond Barion’s archive. To begin with, an archive description has been made that reflects the current structure and state of the archive. Furthermore, an extensive interview has been conducted with the artist and his wife, which documents his professional career.

Read the full interview here.