(Itegem/Belgium 1932-1984 France)
Untitled - Blue, signed, dated on the reverse Jef Verheyen 63/64, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm (rhombus), framed

The work is part of a series of diamond-shaped Zonnebogen (‘Sunbows’ or ‘Sonnenbogen’) in different colours that Verheyen called Espace Jaune, Espace Brun, Espace Bleu.

We are grateful to the Jef Verheyen Archive, Belgium, for their scientific assistance in cataloguing this work.

Provenance:
Private Collection Grenchen, Switzerland
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Galerie Schoeller, Ölbilder und Gouachen, Düsseldorf 9.11.1990-12.1.1991

“I don’t know why one person has a sense of colour and the other doesn’t, but it’s a fact that colour and sense of colour can’t be separated, just like word and language are inseparable. Somehow, seeing colours and colour sense are the same. For me, these seemingly so different concepts are so closely connected with each other that I can only speak of a kind of interaction, of an activity where the quantity of one becomes the quality of the other.”
Jef Verheyen

“Seeing is feeling with your eyes”
Jef Verheyen

Starting in the 1960s, Belgian artist Jef Verheyen developed a sophisticated technique for the creation of his works. In order to produce his subtle gradations of colour, he built up the colour in translucent layers and delicate glazes. With this method of multi-layered paint application, Jef Verheyen placed himself in the old-masterly tradition of Jan van Eyck, who created the illusion of depth and represented reality with mimetic precision. Jef Verheyen, on the other hand, makes only the colour visible in its expression, whereby his glazing technique of using soft broad brushes and bales of shredded nylon stockings, disguises the materiality. The technique of Jef Verheyen’s colour application is only detectable in grazing light. The paint applied to the canvas in the various shades of blue in this work appears almost dematerialised due to its extreme smoothness and the nearly invisible brushwork. As planned by Jef Verheyen, the numerous superimposed layers of colour in nuances of blue create a depth that changes depending on the incidence of light - “Decreasing light is increasing darkness. Increasing light is decreasing darkness. … My life has been a permanent dialogue with light”
“The frequency of light is as it is and nothing else, but from seeing to experiencing, and then to the conscious awareness of that which is experienced, is on another level. And unichromatic to monochromatic, and achromatic to panchromatic colour observations, are also on a totally different level.”

Jef Verheyen, 1969 Quotes from: www.jefverheyen.com