Jef Verheyen

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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• 0657 • Monochrome - Achrome I , 1958

Private

Painting , 92 x 73 cm

Oil paint on burlap

In the castle in the Middelheim Park, the first
G58 exhibitions were held there between May
and October 1958, with alternating groups of
four or five artists. Verheyen participated in the
fifth group exhibition together with Vic Estercam,
Paul Bervoets and Walter Vanermen. He exhibited
his first monochrome and achrome experiments.
Callewaert described them in a review, “And my
preference always goes out to these spontaneous,
sometimes very poetic sketches, where the
inspiration is not killed by endless finessing,
and which sometimes contain a floating feeling
and a diffused light. Alongside wide-ranging
variations on the same theme – a semicircle, a
gentle arc, floating or draped in space – Verheyen
exhibits a curious monochrome painting entirely
in white, which derives its entire impact from the
relief of the paint and from the effect of light.”

This work, entitled Monochrome - Achrome I, can be linked to the same idea of Wit op Wit, 'White on white' (39). With a knife the artist applied white paint onto the burlap.

References

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

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