Jef Verheyen

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The Belgian ZERO artist Jef Verheyen (1932-1984) became known as the painter of light streams and colour spectra. He experimented not only with light, but also with movement and the invisible as means to evoke natural mechanisms and to reveal universal interrelationships between human beings and the surrounding world. He used geometric principles – his passion for geometry was born out of his interest in mathematics and (Greek) philosophy – as the basis for harmony. Verheyen never gave up on traditional media and materials such as the canvas, paint, and brushes to search for the essence of our nature. 

Jef Verheyen

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(c)Jef Verheyen, photo: Axel Vervoordt - Jef Verheyen Archive
• 0070 • Cathédrale de la Lumière, 1960
Axel and May Vervoordt Foundation
Painting , 97 x 130 cm, 107 x 141 cm with frame
Oil paint on canvas

[...] In both operational and theoretical terms, these are somewhat eccentric positions to put forward in a European context, where the point of reference was still the pictorial dimension: a dimension which Verheyen himself was to resolve in a different and more evocative direction, in a sort of chromatic pantheism which receives spatial and light-related stimuli in a quite different way, leading to an explosion of flows of light and cathedrals of light, which, in their very titles, bespeak his particular vocation and frame of reference. [...]

Source: Francesca Pola, 'Bodies of light and dialectics of the immaterial. Spazialismo, Essentialisme, Achrome' in Jef Verheyen and Friends, exh. cat., 2010: p. 157.

Around 1966 – 1967, Jef Verheyen would paint Lichtkathedralen (Light Cathedrals).

References

  • Retrospectieve Jef Verheyen, 1932-1984 / Willy Van den Bussche & Léonore Verheyen. - Oostende/Brugge : Provinciaal Museum voor Moderne Kunst/Stichting Kunstboek, 1994. - 158 p. : ill. ; 30 x 24.5 cm

  • Jef Verheyen 'Lux est Lex' / Freddy De Vree. - Wijnegem : Axel Vervoordt, 2004. - 160 p. : ill. ; 35 x 28 cm

  • Jef Verheyen, Le peintre flamant / Dirk Pörschmann & Tijs Visser. - Brussels : ASA Publishers, 2010. - 256 p. : ill. ; 23 x 23 cm

  • (my private) Heroes / Jan Hoet. - Herford/Bielefeld : MARTa Herford/Skreber Verlag, 2005. - 295 p. : ill. ; 25,5 cm x 20,8 cm

  • ZERO - Internationale Künstler-Avantgarde der 50er/60er Jahre / Jean-Hubert Martin. - Düsseldorf/Ostfildern : museum kunst palast/Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006. - 330 p. : ill. ; 28,5 cm x 23,5 cm

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