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 - Window on Infinity

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©RMN-Grand Palais (MNAAG, Paris) / Thierry Ollivier

Chinese dream stone with poetic inscription: The snow and the moon reflect light back to each other, 19th century

Musée national des arts asiatiques – Musée Guimet, Paris

Painting , 38 x 1 cm

Chinese Dali marble, highlighted with black ink, ornamental plate for chair or screen

In the Musée Guimet, in Paris, Verheyen and Dani

Franque particularly admire the traditional Chinese

monochrome ceramics and paintings. Verheyen

explains: ‘My orientation towards the inner and to

Chinese art comes from ceramics and porcelain, of

which the monochromes are the high point. Both in

my ceramics and in my paintings I tried to achieve

a kind of essence that is beyond the formal.’

This Chinese dream stone also comes

from the Musée Guimet. The circular, lunar shape

and the title point towards Verheyen’s later works.

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