Jef Verheyen (ENG)

Major oeuvre overview of the conceptual painter Jef Verheyen As a driving force of the international avant garde, Jef Verheyen (1932–1984) occupies an important position in the European art world. In the late 1950s the art of painting arrives at a “zero point” in part thanks to his vision. Verheyen developed an inimitable monochrome painting technique by layering such thin layers of paint over each other that they seem to be misted onto the canvas. And so the painting became a contemplative space: a window on the infinite, an invitation to daydream, stare into the void or – more conceptually – focus our gaze. His whole life, Verheyen tried to reconcile tradition with innovation. His modernist adventure encompassed ceramic experimentation, eastern philosophy and the art of the Flemish masters. Jef Verheyen – Window on Infinity offers hundreds of works that show the substantive and stylistic evolution of Le Peintre Flamant, the name he gave himself. Thanks to a selection of previouslyunpublished notebooks, photographs and letters, this oeuvre overview also gives a view on the artist’s archive. Edited by Annelien De Troij, curator of the M HKA, and Adriaan Gonnissen, curator of the KMSKA.