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

(c)Jef Verheyen, photo: Jef Verheyen Archive
• 0071 • Untitled, 1960
Private
Painting , 99 x 80 cm, 101,5 x 81,5 cm with frame
Oil paint on canvas

The loss of gravity, the dissolving of contrast, reducing painting to its essential appearance, brought the only dimension: the power of colour. Light is the essential mechanism, colour is the pictorial dynamic, the broadest, most essential transcendence. The colour revelation is the awareness. Essentialism is the alfa and omega of the pictorial existence.

Source: Jef Verheyen in 1962 quoted in exh. cat. Retrospectieve, Jef Verheyen, 1932-1984, 1994: p. 40. (translated to English)

References
  • Zero: Bildvorstellungen einer europäischen Avantgarde, 1958-1964, exh. cat., 1979.