Summer 2015. Deep in the Spanish inland, something special is about to happen. Two people were sitting on the local terrace of Corteconcepcion. With the tapas on the table and a glass of wine in hand, they looked around. A feisty woman was reeling in the laundry, a tractor chugged past, and the other people in the bar were playing cards and joking around. The usual. The evening sun on the whitewashed walls made the whole image into something of a postcard. Hilde and Peter – both ready to leave everything behind in their homeland, Belgium – looked at each other, and they both instantly knew: “This is it, this is where it’s going to happen”.
Hilde Van Gorp, graduated from School of Arts Gent (Belgium) in the “chambre d’amis” year 1986, a passionate traveler and advertiser, and Peter De Ridder, nature fanatic, also one of those passionate travelers, returned after more than twenty years of richly filled, settled, but also restless living, back to their roots. A dream project that unites both of their passions: an artist’s residency in a nature reserve, and this in their beloved Spanish countryside.
Realising a sustainable project in a nature park in Spain is a real challenge. For Hilde and Peter, too, it was not without its struggles. The road was long but the passion was great, they did not give up and kept going. Thanks to the many support and encouragement from people both here in the region and back home in Belgium, arteventura became reality and the first artists arrived 3 years later, in April 2018.
In May 2022 the first exhibition will be held in Antwerp, during the Antwerp Art weekend. That same weekend we invite all arteventura artists to the first reunion. We hope to make this a tradition in the future.
