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Lot Essay
A velvety black veil fills Jef Verheyen’s beguiling matte monochrome Essentie II. Painted in 1961, Essentie II asks for patience for its slow reveal of a perfect, subtle gradient of infinite black. Verheyen used paint which dried quickly and allowed him to achieve graceful gradations in colour. Using a wide bristle brush, he applied thin coats of translucent glaze, building up the layers to create a balanced sheen of colour that appears to fold into itself. These paintings, Verheyen said, endeavoured to create ‘something that has the same force as the act of breathing’ (J. Verheyen quoted in ‘Essentialism is the Rhythm of Life’, in Jef Verheyen: Le Peintre Flamant, exh. cat., Langen Foundation, Neuss, 2010, p. 9).
The early 1960s were key years for Verheyen, during which his paintings were shown alongside works by Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Ad Reinhardt and Marc Rothko, among others, in a series of exhibitions that considered monochromatic painting held at the Museum Schloss Morsbroich. At one of these openings, Verheyen met Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, the co-founders of the influential ZERO group which sought new ways to image light and space. Although Verheyen soon became affiliated with ZERO, he saw himself as a traditional painter, citing the influences of Old Masters such as Jan van Eyck, Vermeer and Botticelli, and located his practice firmly within figurative traditions of Dutch art; even his method of layering glazes was indebted to techniques used by Van Eyck. As the artist himself said, ‘Vermeer, Van Eyck and I perceive nature in a similar way. Our depiction of the natural world has nothing to do with the natural landscape, but within an eternal rhythm’ (J. Verheyen quoted in ‘Pour une peinture non plastique’, 1959, reprinted in J. Trautwein, ‘Materiality and Transcendence of Colour: Jef Verheyen’s Paintings’, exh. cat., Langen Foundation, Neuss, 2010, p. 82). Striving towards chromatic purity, Verheyen’s paintings nevertheless feel wholly contemporary, and like its title suggests, Essentie II, too, endeavours to represent an essential force, the essence of being, in lush and boundless black.
The early 1960s were key years for Verheyen, during which his paintings were shown alongside works by Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Ad Reinhardt and Marc Rothko, among others, in a series of exhibitions that considered monochromatic painting held at the Museum Schloss Morsbroich. At one of these openings, Verheyen met Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, the co-founders of the influential ZERO group which sought new ways to image light and space. Although Verheyen soon became affiliated with ZERO, he saw himself as a traditional painter, citing the influences of Old Masters such as Jan van Eyck, Vermeer and Botticelli, and located his practice firmly within figurative traditions of Dutch art; even his method of layering glazes was indebted to techniques used by Van Eyck. As the artist himself said, ‘Vermeer, Van Eyck and I perceive nature in a similar way. Our depiction of the natural world has nothing to do with the natural landscape, but within an eternal rhythm’ (J. Verheyen quoted in ‘Pour une peinture non plastique’, 1959, reprinted in J. Trautwein, ‘Materiality and Transcendence of Colour: Jef Verheyen’s Paintings’, exh. cat., Langen Foundation, Neuss, 2010, p. 82). Striving towards chromatic purity, Verheyen’s paintings nevertheless feel wholly contemporary, and like its title suggests, Essentie II, too, endeavours to represent an essential force, the essence of being, in lush and boundless black.