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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• 0772 • Fiori Oscuri, 1977

Axel and May Vervoordt Foundation

Painting , 41 x 33 cm, 60 x 46 x 9 cm with frame

matt lacquer on canvas, framed in Renaissance Italian 16th century oak

Door de Fiori oscuri bloeit een vloed van wijn
of is het het bloed van donkere bloemen?

Rood van rozen

Le sang sens des fleurs obscurs
Bloedend
Fiori oscuri

Le sens de fleur obscur

Bloed van donkere bloemen

Jef Verheyen, quote from his notes, 1977

Fiori Oscuri. In Italian that means ‘dark flowers’.

The title reveals that we are looking at a floral

still life. This is no accurate depiction of dark

red roses, but instead just the idea of them, the

colour. The Renaissance frame is like a window.

A window on an infinite field of colour. Flowers

– and by extension our own existence – are

ephemeral. In his notes Verheyen wrote that in

this work ‘the dark flowers are as dark as blood.

The blood of dark flowers.’

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