Founded in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium are home to a large number of masterpieces which bear witness to the country's rich cultural heritage. The collections cover more than six centuries of history, from the Flemish Primitives to the present day.

They include a collection of modern and contemporary art, developed from 1928 onwards as a collection of "living" art. Composed largely of works by Belgian artists whose havealso gained fame abroad, it records the great emancipatory adventure of art since 1900, illustrating the key movements and developments from then onwards. The collection also extends to include most major international figures, thanks to a precisely-planned acquisition policy pursued from the mid-1960s onwards. René Magritte, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Francis Bacon, Henry Moore, Josef Albers, Donald Judd, Lucio Fontana, Pierre Alechinsky, Marcel Broodthaers and also Christo, Luc Tuymans and David Claerbout and others find their place in this high-level international collection. Put together patiently over the years, it embraces the many media that have marked the history of art: oil painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and, more recently, video and installation. The present work offers a sign ificant overview of this collection, with descriptions of a hundred or so works and some 150 reproductions.

This bookis the second in a series of works devoted to the collections of the RMFAB.