Jef Verheyen - Window on Infinity
So important to the European art world and yet relatively unknown in Belgium: Flemish artist Jef Verheyen (1932-1984) returns to Antwerp. Forty years after his death, the KMSKA presents the first museum solo exhibition of this illustrious modern master in his hometown. A first.
Jef Verheyen. Window on Infinity closely follows the evolution of this modern master. We see how he moves from ceramic experiments to painting, constantly refining the medium. In light and dark, in form and color. New archive research reveals how Verheyen bridges the gap between tradition and innovation, between present and future. In search of the essence, in the infinite. Everything to make us look differently and see more. Let that be the exact motto of the KMSKA.
Movement, color, and light
When you stand before a work by Verheyen, it seems as if particles, like clouds, softly drift past. All colors between black and white appear in elusive arcs of light and sunbows, rainbows and moonbows, sometimes in diamond shapes, sometimes in a composite composition. In bright colors, Verheyen paints homages to Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), kindred seekers of light.
"In both ceramics and my paintings, I tried to achieve a kind of 'essence' beyond the formal."
Contemporary resonance
The curators have also invited contemporary artists to cast light on Verheyen’s role as a pioneer of a different way of looking at art. Installations by Ann Veronica Janssens, Kimsooja, Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen and Pieter Vermeersch will intensify visitors’ spatial and visual experience of the exhibition.
Jef Verheyen: Window on Infinity is a collaborative project between two Antwerp partner museums, the KMSKA and M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp). This exhibition is the result of extensive research performed by M HKA in cooperation with the Jef Verheyen Archive.
The last modernist
As with many major crises, World War II represents a turning point for the arts. Verheyen and other artists of his generation asked themselves: what is the essence of art? They thought conceptually about art history, fostering a desire to push art further without necessarily rejecting the past. It was about breaking down the partitions between disciplines. Many of his contemporaries left painting, while Verheyen steadfastly stuck to it.
Verheyen felt akin to the pursuit of the conceptual, but at the same time, he nurtured a great love for craft. Yet, Verheyen was a child of his time. The idea of what painting could be had fundamentally changed. Through monochromy, Verheyen evolved towards an artless art. By painting in washed layers without brushstrokes, he deliberately directed the viewer's gaze beyond his paint to the light, to infinity. It was necessary to look beyond the flat surface, to actually see through it—into the void or space. This was partly literal; the space race between the United States and Russia was raging in full force at the time, reflecting a broader societal push towards new frontiers.
“I paint to see.”
Initially, Verheyen incorporated his interests into ceramics. Beginning in 1957, his early paintings started to prominently feature circles, loops, half-moon arcs, and spheres. The movement of Abstract Expressionism, particularly evident in the works of young American artists, also served as a significant source of inspiration for him. Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), for instance, adopted the Eastern tradition of engaging with the canvas directly on the ground, akin to making calligraphic marks, which influenced Verheyen's approach.
Monochromy and identity
In 1957, a significant turning point occurred for the 25-year-old Verheyen when he moved to the modern metropolis of Milan. There, he met Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), the Argentinian-Italian painter, sculptor, and theoretician. Verheyen found a soul mate in Fontana, particularly in his Concetto Spaziale series, which explored the spatial dimensions of art.
As early as 1946, Fontana had advocated for a novel approach to time and space in his Manifesto Blanco. Despite the age difference, Verheyen and Fontana found common ground, as evidenced by the letters they exchanged. In Milan, Verheyen also established connections with artists Roberto Crippa (1921-1972) and Piero Manzoni (1933-1963), further enriching his artistic journey.
The impact of Manzoni's achrome art on Verheyen's work was profound, prompting a shift from labyrinthine, cosmic paintings to pure monochromes, painted in a single color, representing a new essence. The black monochrome painting Veil of Mystery (1958-1959) stands as a pivotal work in this development.
"Black has always seemed more matter than white to me. Black is thus matter itself. White is matter separate from matter. Matter-free. Complete space. Black is a dead colour."
To his Milanese friends, Verheyen was hailed as a 'true Flemish artist,' highlighting the international appeal of the Flemish art tradition—an eye-opener for him. Verheyen had already embraced the glazing technique pioneered by Jan van Eyck (1390-1441). With the slogan Ligt de universaliteit in de traditie?' ('Does universality lie in tradition?'), Verheyen and Englebert Van Anderlecht (1918-1961) founded the New Flemish School in 1960, aiming to establish Antwerp as a hotspot for the international avant-garde.
On another note, he began to title his paintings with names like Flemish place or 'Espace Flamand,' through which Verheyen explored his identity as a Flemish painter. These titles reflect more an idea of Flanders—as he perceived it in the landscapes of Constant Permeke (1886-1952)—rather than specific observations of a place.
Movement, colour, light
Monochrome painters believe that pigments by themselves can suggest movement. Pollock must sway his brush to obtain movement. Verheyen, Yves Klein (1928-1962) and co take a different approach to 'movement'.
Standing in front of a work by Verheyen, it seems as if particles, like clouds, seem to slide gently by. It is a kind of static movement, generated by paint and technique. Verheyen sees an echo of this in the colour fields of Mark Rothko (1903-1970).
From the early 1960s, Verheyen integrates more colour, and light. If you let a prism refract the light you see a spectrum of colours. The artist believes you don't necessarily have to paint that whole spectrum to create the illusion that those missing colours are there after all. Panchromia, it's called. All the colours between black and white appear in elusive arcs of light and sun, rain and moon arcs, sometimes in diamond shapes, sometimes in a composite composition. In bright colours, Verheyen paints homages to Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), kindred light seekers. Verheyen's light is again more of an idea, a sense, than the light he sees from his studio window, which makes him an abstract artist. He refers to James Ensor (1860-1940), who at a late stage of his life made drawings and paintings in very light pastel tones.
Verheyen feels akin to the pursuit of the conceptual, but at the same time nurtures a great love of craft. Yet Verheyen is a child of his time. The idea of what painting can be has fundamentally changed. Verheyen grows via monochromy towards an artless art, By painting without brushstrokes in washed layers, he deliberately sends the viewer's gaze beyond his paint to the light, to infinity. You have to look beyond the flat surface, actually look through it. Into the void, or space. Partly literally, the space race between the United States and Russia is raging in full force at the time.
“The impressionists see the light first, then they feel; I feel first then I see. I believe Monet personified himself with pure colour.”
ZERO movement & cooperation
With his exploration of the phenomenon of 'light', Jef Verheyen connects with the ZERO movement in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France and the Netherlands. On his painting front, as they get to work with lamps, reflectors and mirrors.
Despite the difference in artistic practice, Verheyen finds companions in the movement to collaborate multimedia with. He reveals himself as a curator and engages his international network for total concepts in which craft, science, art and architecture merge. Jef Verheyen puts post-war Antwerp on the map alongside Milan, Paris, Düsseldorf and Amsterdam.
Fontana, Van Anderlecht and Hermann Goepfert (1926-1982) are the dream partners who put their shoulders under the hybrid art forms. Within the group of ZERO artists, it is mainly with Günther Uecker (°1930) that Verheyen builds a close friendship. Brotherly, they organised the open-air exhibition Flemish Landscapes in the countryside in Mullem in 1967. The duo places a large window frame in the landscape to direct the gaze to the sky, as a tangible window to the infinite. It is the complete dematerialisation of art, and one of the most conceptual interventions of Verheyen's career. It does not end with this performance. The artist also creates small versions with titles like Le Vide and Le Plein, and also integrates the 'bounding of nothingness' into his painting.
"A window properly placed today can hold more mystery than a thousand candles and two Christ statues."
ZERO International Antwerp
In 1979, Jef Verheyen curated the ZERO International Antwerp exhibition at KMSKA. In the following years, the museum bought several works by members of the ZERO movement, often from the artists themselves, including Verheyen. This international ensemble is the last ensemble to be given an integral place in the museum's collection and includes names such as Lucio Fontana and Günther Uecker, Verheyen's friends.
Cathedrals of light and geometry
After experimenting with archetypes, colour and light, Verheyen refocuses his gaze on shapes in those fertile 1960s. He introduces tondos, round paintings, which in Italian art history hang higher than classical paintings. At the same time, the circle is an infinite form, which also has symbolic value in the East. With a triptych like Cathedrals of Light, Verheyen unites his research into colour, light and (the Gothic) form.
'Decreasing light is increasing darkness', and vice versa. For Verheyen, day and night are like the breathing of the world, which he wants to represent. Natural phenomena and the basic elements earth, air, fire and light become his alpha and omega. From those basic elements, he even pours out an experimental film, an early artist film, Essential, which has a place in the expo.
Meanwhile, Verheyen continues to search for the light that is different everywhere. It leads him away from the Flemish landscape to Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Italy. Finally, in 1974, he moves from Antwerp to Provence.
In mathematics and Greek philosophy, Verheyen finds a basis for harmony and the ideal space. Geometric basic shapes or perspective lines are the foundations of Verheyen's later paintings. Between 1980 and 1984, he transforms, among other things, diamond-shaped mirrors into trompe l'oeils. The shapes seem to float in an unlimited space, like a window on the infinite. The circle is complete.
'Diminishing light is increasing darkness', and vice versa. For Verheyen, day and night are like the breathing of the world, which he wants to represent. Natural phenomena and the basic elements earth, air, fire and light become his alpha and omega. From those basic elements, he even pours out an experimental film, an early artist film, Essential, which has a place in the expo.
Meanwhile, Verheyen continues to search for the light that is different everywhere. It leads him away from the Flemish landscape to Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Italy. Finally, in 1974, he moves from Antwerp to Provence.
In mathematics and Greek philosophy, Verheyen finds a basis for harmony and the ideal space. Geometric basic shapes or perspective lines are the foundations of Verheyen's later paintings. Between 1980 and 1984, he transforms, among other things, diamond-shaped mirrors into trompe l'oeils. The shapes seem to float in an unlimited space, like a window on the infinite. The circle is complete.
Contemporary masters
Verheyen explored a different way of experiencing art, which seems obvious today. But is it? How do artists today deal with the infinite, light or colour? Ann Veronica Janssens, Kimsooja, Pieter Vermeersch and the tandem Carla Arocha-Stéphane Schraenen take up the challenge with dynamic light installations or mirror paintings Just like Verheyen, they break through the boundaries of painting to stimulate the visitor's visual amazement.
Bridge builder
The Jef Verheyen Archive found its home at the Centrum Kunstarchieven Vlaanderen (CKV) in the M HKA. From the letters, diaries, essays, manifestos, Verheyen clearly emerges as a bridge builder. With great love for the craft of, for instance, Jan van Eyck, whose two works the KMSKA owns. At the same time, the painter finds the idea more important than the execution. Jef Verheyen. Window on the Infinite shows the usually underexposed conceptual aspects of Verheyen's art, thus acting as a linking figure between the KMSKA and the M HKA, between tradition and innovation.
Jef Verheyen. Window on Infinity is a collaboration of two Antwerp partner museums, KMSKA and M HKA (Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen). This exhibition is the result of extensive research by Annelien De Troij (M HKA) in collaboration with the Jef Verheyen Archive.
Curators: Annelien De Troij (M HKA) & Adriaan Gonnissen (KMSKA)
Click here for a vitual tour of the exhibition.
Window on Infinity - Room 01
Photo: Christine Clinckx / M HKA
WINDOW ON INFINITY
A painting is more than a representation of reality. That is why modern painting embarks on a quest to liberate the imagination. Jef Verheyen’s ‘windows on infinity’ are an end destination on that expedition. Le Peintre Flamant – as Verheyen calls himself – takes us to what lies beyond perception. Directing our gaze to the immeasurable and incomprehensible, his contemplative spaces invite us to step beyond the physical boundaries of the canvas.
In Verheyen’s oeuvre lie dialogues between various artistic traditions, from European to East Asian. His artistic experimentation blends with Chinese philosophy: painting meets meditation. In this way – as thinking artist – Verheyen constructs a bridge between modern, conceptual and contemporary art.
Window on Infinity - Room 02
Scan: CKV - Jef Verheyen Archive
A universal language
During his training at the Antwerp academy, Jef Verheyen’s greatest discovery is the ceramics class and it is there that he meets Dani Franque, his future spouse. Together they travel to the ceramic workshops in the Southern French village of Vallauris, where Pablo Picasso also had his workshop. There they become familiar with the age-old basic forms of this craft. In 1955 Verheyen and Franque open their own ceramics studio in Antwerp. Its walls are graced with pictures of their sources of inspiration: a photo of Picasso hangs among photos of pre-Columbian and tribal sculptures; Indonesian dancers hang next to the cave paintings of Lascaux.
In the mid-1950s Verheyen rediscovers his love of painting. The atlas of images on his studio wall reminds him of the mystical ‘primal function’ of art. As Verheyen puts it: ‘Everyone can “feel” painting, everyone speaks our language… or at least, everyone is a conveyor of its primal forms.’
Window on Infinity - Room 03
Photo: Christine Clinckx / M HKA
Meditating on colour
Colour, light and texture: Jef Verheyen uses them to make us think about emptiness. He finds inspiration for this in East Asian thinking and in traditional Chinese artistic crafts. To paint with one colour (monochrome) or with the absence of colour (achrome)? After 1957 Verheyen ponders this question. His meeting with Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana in Milan at the end of 1958 increases his desire to experiment. Shortly after this he plans an Antwerp exhibition of international monochrome painters.
That project is abandoned. But in 1960 a similar exhibition is held in Leverkusen, Germany. Verheyen and the monochrome painters put themselves firmly on the map. Their ‘artless art’ offers an alternative to the refined touch of the Impressionists and the grand gesture of the Abstract Expressionists. For them, only the poetry of pure matter counts, of colour or absence of colour. Because, as Verheyen writes: ‘In a monochrome or achrome painting, light must be felt rather than seen.’
Window on Infinity - Room 04
Photo: Christine Clinckx / M HKA
Non-plastic painting
Jef Verheyen explores the canvas as an experience space. He describes his style as ‘non-plastic painting’. Thanks to the translucent layers of paint he applies one above the other, it is as if he is painting with air. The brushstrokes are barely visible in his atmospheric landscapes. In these dark, hazy environments, a cosmic silence predominates. Vibrations seem to set the spaces in static motion. Verheyen’s technique of building up paint in translucent layers is centuries old. Jan van Eyck applied it in in his oil paintings in the fifteenth century. Le Peintre Flamant aims to refine the technique in dematerialised ‘portraits’ of dark and light.
‘When I first exhibited in Milan and told visitors that I came from the same country as Van Eyck, Memling, Van der Weyden, Van der Goes and Rubens, they were astonished. To my Italian friends and acquaintances I was instantly Jef Verheyen, “un giovane pittore fiammingo”. In my work they recognised the continuation of what they find typical of la pittura fiamminga: light and space.’
Jef Verheyen, ca. 1970
Window on Infinity - Room 05
Photo: Christine Clinckx / M HKA
Feeling the light
‘The great difference between Impressionist and Contemporary notions of light is that the Impressionists felt light as seeing and we, on the other hand, see light as feeling. Light should be felt rather than seen. It's a more participatory experience.’
Jef Verheyen, 1960
Verheyen wants to suggest infinity with light, colour and space. This art experience also fascinates many contemporary artists. That is why the KMSKA and the M HKA have invited Kimsooja, Pieter Vermeersch, Ann Veronica Janssens and Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen to contribute a work to the exhibition.
Their installations emphasise Verheyen's role as a pioneer of a different art experience. Be amazed by extraordinary spatial experiences.
Window on Infinity - Room 06
Photo: Christine Clinckx / M HKA
Essential
In 1964 Jef Verheyen and poet Paul De Vree make the experimental film Essentieel (Essential). It enables Verheyen to present real vibrations, reflections and tremors of light. Experiencing light is more important to him than painting it. In Essentieel we see flashing, monochrome fields of colour and abstract representations of the elements: fire, water, earth and air. Abstract soundscapes are interrupted by recurring sentences in different languages:
Als de zon zonnig alleen zijn
Off to the cosmos
Plonger dans l’infini
Quiver entirely
Window on Infinity - Room 07
Photo: Christine Clinckx / M HKA
A canvas with stainless steel reflectors, by Hermann Goepfert. A composition with mirror surfaces, by Christian Megert. A sculpted torsion form, by Walter Leblanc. Unlike his colleagues, Verheyen does not experiment with mirror, glass or steel. He paints in oil on burlap and sticks to the two-dimensional canvas. All these works nevertheless have one thing in common: they are in constant dialogue with the light. Verheyen and the ZERO artists invite us not to stand still and stare, but rather to move past the works. In that way we activate light and space and become part of the work.
Window on Infinity - Room 08
Photo: Christine Clinckx / M HKA
Painting with air and smoke
Smoke, flames, rain and air… how can one capture the evanescence of these elements? That is what Piero Manzoni, Yves Klein and Jef Verheyen wonder. They explore the limits of painting and push its boundaries with a more conceptual art. To them the concept or idea behind the work of art is of great importance. In Verheyen's oeuvre this manifests itself in titles such as Ruimte (Space) and Niet Ruimte (Non-Space).
Verheyen remains faithful to painting, but he also explores other artistic media, in collaborations with various artists, poets and architects. His open air collaboration with Günther Uecker, for example, is a Land Art project avant la lettre. With architect Renaat Braem, Verheyen designs an installation for the architectural project Integratie 64. He also co-curates this exhibition, a role he will take on several times.
Window on Infinity - Room 09
Photo: Christine Clinckx / M HKA
Van Gogh to Verheyen: seekers of light
In paintings such as Zwarte Zomer (Black Summer) and Permeke, Jef Verheyen paints his perception of the Flemish atmosphere, which is rather dark. Later in the 1960s, he travels to Brazil, Mexico, Tunisia, Spain, Italy and France in search of light, which is everywhere different. A northerner in search of southern light: Vincent van Gogh went on the same quest before him. In a letter written in Provence in 1889, Van Gogh writes to his brother about the southern light: ‘Perhaps my journey into the south will bear fruit, however, because the difference of the stronger light, the blue sky, teaches one to see, but especially and only if one looks at it for a long time. (…) one must first and gradually accustom one’s eyes to the different light.’ During his travels, Verheyen also writes in his letters about the enchantment of the light. ‘Everything shimmers here!’ He tries to render the essence of those impressions on canvas.
Window on Infinity - Room 10
Photo: Christine Clinckx / M HKA
Cathedrals of Light
After monochromy and achromy, Jef Verheyen explores panchromy, embracing not just many colours but all the colours of the rainbow and sun path. He uses these to paint refractions, tondos and cathedrals of light as homages to light. In 1974 Verheyen moves to Provence. He writes several times about its exceptional ‘shimmering light’, a light that inspires him to paint an homage to impressionist painter Claude Monet. Verheyen doesn’t base this work on observation, however, but rather on the imagination of light as an idea or concept. Light takes shape here in the enchanting interplay of crystal-clear colours. Verheyen paints them he says ‘flat on a deep painting’. Adimensional, infinite and intangible. Like a space. Or like a breath.
Window on Infinity - Room 11
Photo: Christine Clinckx / M HKA
Geometry and harmony
Jef Verheyen continuously dialogues with art history. With his diptychs, triptychs and folding screens he links in with a long tradition. Multiple crafts – such as textile design, painting and art furniture – were already being brought together in the folding screens of ancient China. In his five-panel screen, Verheyen explores the boundaries between art and architecture, painting and sculpture, function and decoration. In the last series of paintings of his career, Verheyen works with basic geometric shapes and perspective lines. He studies and explores mathematical proportions and Greek philosophy as a basis for harmony. He paints, for example, the square shape of the megaron, an ancient Greek architectural term. Between 1980 and 1984 he paints trompe l’oeil spaces, in which diamond-shaped mirrors float in infinity.
Window on Infinity - Room De Keyserzaal
© Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen, photo Pieter Huybrechts
‘Mechelen Marauder fractures space. Its ephemeral, translucent, cylindrical form reinforces the rotational movement in space. Our aim is to provoke thought by destabilising space. The mirror, as an everyday object, functions as a medium that simultaneously attracts and repels. The repulsion varies from viewer to viewer as it fractures one’s image along with all that crosses its path. It extends like a whirlwind between the circular floor mosaic and the glass ceiling – like something that barely seems to stop.’
Carla Arocha & Stéphane Schraenen, 2023
Window on Infinity - Room Madonna 2.17
Photo: Christine Clinckx / M HKA
For Jef Verheyen, painting is like a liturgy. It is a celebration of colour. He is interested in the symbolism of colours, the emotions they evoke and the interaction between colour and meaning. A reproduction of Jean Fouquet's Madonna hung in his studio. Verheyen's diptych Lux est Lex hangs here beside that 15th-century masterpiece, a work that was originally part of a diptych. Both artists play with the contrast between blue and red, between cold and warm. The cherubim and seraphim become fields of colour. Verheyen's diptych is an homage to a painting that is so modern in character that it appears surreal. It could just as well have been painted today.
Window on Infinity - Room Profusion 2.11
Photo: Christine Clinckx / M HKA
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.’