Jef Verheyen ”Lichtvlinder”. 1972

Oil on canvas. 130 × 130 cm (51 ⅛ × 51 ⅛ in.). Inscribed, signed, dated and titled on the reverse in black felt-tip pen: Provence Jef Verheyen 72 Lichtvlinder. Inscribed on the crossbar in black brush: H 5 [illegible]. Also bearing an exhibition label from Brussels, 1979 (see below), and a label and stamp from Galerie Schoeller, Düsseldorf.. [3021] Framed, Oil on canvas. 130 × 130 cm (51 ⅛ × 51 ⅛ in.). Inscribed, signed, dated and titled on the reverse in black felt-tip pen: Provence Jef Verheyen 72 Lichtvlinder. Inscribed on the crossbar in black brush: H 5 [illegible]. Also bearing an exhibition label from Brussels, 1979 (see below), and a label and stamp from Galerie Schoeller, Düsseldorf.. [3021] Framed, Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired in 1991 at Galerie Schoeller, Düsseldorf), Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired in 1991 at Galerie Schoeller, Düsseldorf), Lux est Lex. Tarascon, France, Abbaye Saint-Michel de Frigolet, 1975 / Jef Verheyen – 7 Peintures. Neuchâtel, Galerie Média, 1975 / Jef Verheyen. Rétrospectieve. Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1979 / Jef Verheyen. Geneva, Musée Rath, 1980 / Jef Verheyen. Ölbilder und Gouachen. Düsseldorf, Galerie Schoeller, 1990/91. “You really should have been there for the opening,” recalled the critic and contemporary witness John Anthony Thwaites of an evening at the opening of a Jef Verheyen exhibition. “There was quite a lot of smoking. The smoke hung heavily in the air in front of the paintings, and after a while you could hardly tell what belonged to the painting and what was smoke.” This little anecdote captures something essential about Verheyen’s painting: it blurs, merges with its surroundings and eludes clear boundaries, precisely as the artist intended. Throughout his life, Jef Verheyen was a sensitive seeker and a sensuous explorer who used colour to merge light, space and time. For him, “diminishing light” meant “increasing darkness”, and vice versa. Colour becomes a reality experienced by the viewer, relinquishing its material character and all reference to the tangible world. In Verheyen’s work, it becomes space to be experienced in its own right. In turning away from all geometric symbolism, Verheyen described his painting as essential. His guiding principle was succinctly expressed in the words: “Seeing is feeling with the eye.” At just 26, Verheyen held his first international solo exhibition at Galleria Pater in Milan in 1958. None other than Lucio Fontana wrote the introduction to the accompanying catalogue, marking the beginning of a formative friendship. That same year, Verheyen met Yves Klein in Paris and exhibited in Antwerp alongside the monochrome painters Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni. He went on to become a key point of contact for the ZERO movement in Belgium. Our painting, "Lichtvlinder“ (Light Butterfly), was created in Provence in 1972. Many of Verheyen’s works were inspired by the effects of light in the landscape and, like his Flemish Landscapes, refer to the particular regions that inspired them. As viewers, we can almost imagine the summer song of the cicadas and the delicate flutter of butterflies. Horizontal bands of colour, blending softly into one another or merging with subtle restraint, are overlaid by a diagonal line or two incomplete triangles. The choice is left to the viewer. If extended across the full diagonal of the canvas, the diagonal would run precisely from the lower left to the upper right corner. Yet before reaching the corners, the lines continue by varying distances towards the upper or lower edge, forming a point. The structure is not arranged symmetrically across the surface. Against the harmonious field of colour, the sharply defined shapes introduce a sense of tension. The lines at the right and left edges of the painting do not run parallel. Verheyen had already experimented with comparable pictorial structures in 1959, exploring them through drawings. A painting such as "Lichtvlinder“, with its remarkable complexity, is exceptionally rare within his oeuvre. Two years after its creation, Jef Verheyen moved permanently with his wife and children to the Provence he so cherished, settling in Apt in the Luberon, where he died in 1984 at the age of just 51. AGT

Estimation:€40,000

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