Ensemble: 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.
Works
>Jef Verheyen, • 0207 • Venice by Night, 1965-1966.Painting, paint on silk/mousseline (2) and canvas (3), 5 parts, folding screen, 210 x 120 each, 210 x 620 cm paravent.
>Jef Verheyen, Sammlung Lenz, Galerie Ursula Lichter, • 0105 • Groot violet - violet lens, 1968.Painting, matt lacquer and synthetic resin on canvas, 95 x 190 cm, 99 x 194 cm with frame.
>Jef Verheyen, Günther Uecker, • 0831 • Untitled, 1979.Painting, matt lacquer on canvas, 65 x 65 cm.
>Jef Verheyen, Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop, Ulrich Schumacher, • 0323 • Megaron Metaponte, 1982.Painting, matt lacquer on canvas, 110 x 110 cm.
>Jef Verheyen, • 0330 • Diamant - Zwevende Ruimte , 1984.Painting, matt lacquer on canvas, 71 x 71 cm.