Paul Van Hoeydonck Belgian, b. 1925
PVH067 - Clair de Lune - Maneschijn, 1961
Mixed media on board
80 x 55 cm
Signed, titled and inscribed ''Series Space Mirrors'' verso
BIOGRAPHY Van Hoeydonck graduated in History of Art and Archaeology in his hometown of Antwerp, Belgium. Rooted in the period of Pop-Art, Op-art and Nouveau Realisme, he managed to devise...
BIOGRAPHY
Van Hoeydonck graduated in History of Art and Archaeology in his hometown of Antwerp, Belgium. Rooted in the period of Pop-Art, Op-art and Nouveau Realisme, he managed to devise a completely new oeuvre with his Space-Art. Throughout his career, Van Hoeydonck stood aside dominating styles and movements, and in over 50 years of activity, the concern of manhood and its interaction with the space has been central to his work.
During the 1950’s Van Hoeydonck's worked as a geometrical abstractionist. Colour was high on his agenda, and collages from the period often go into three dimensions. From this concretely constructed abstraction of reality, Van Hoeydonck moved to an extreme simplification in his white toy-reliefs of 1955-56. Movement and light-intervention gradually led him from spatial sensibility to space art during the early 1960s.
His most important works of the 1960s include the series Cities of the future, Spacescapes and White Planets (Planetscapes), which contained works that were in consonance with the space conquering race mood, which dominated the world at that time. Since an early age, Van Hoeydonck has harboured a particular interest in the moon and outer space. He started making unpopulated planets in 1959 and went on to make Constellations, Nebulae and Stardust in different shapes and out of different materials. By firing synthetic paint onto the panel, and letting the paint create its own spontaneous chemical reactions, Van Hoeydonck wished to imitate the effect of a meteor crashing into planet. His non-brush technique ranks amongst the revolutionary ZERO techniques of the time such as slashing canvas (Fontana), punctuating (Bonalumi, Piene and Uecker) and burning (Aubertin).
As the public failed to understand these exceptional works, Van Hoeydonck reacted with his series of so-called Boîtes à monocles, where boxes meant for precious objects, were filled with spectacle glasses - a provocative and humoured reference to the ‘blindness’ of people. During the period 1960-1962, Van Hoeydonck continued to with the found object. Following the ‘Boîtes à Monocles’, he fabricated ‘Bonshommes’ out of ready-mades, often found in the port of Antwerp. These robot-like creatures, consisting of wooden planks and metal objects, are pre-figurations of his later ‘Homo Spatiens’ and are contemporary to the British sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi’s humanoid creatures in bronze.
Although Van Hoeydonck was never officially a member of the Zero group, founded in Dusseldorf in 1957, he was always invited to exhibit at the group’s exhibitions in Germany and in Holland. In 1958, Van Hoeydonck was a co-founder of the G58 group who exhibited their works at the Hessenhuis, Antwerp. Van Hoeydonck was also the driving force behind the historic exhibition ‘Vision in Motion, Motion in Vision’ in 1959, which united the artists Yves Klein, Heinz Mack, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Soto and Van Hoeydonck. By the summer of 1962, Van Hoeydonck was a guest of honor at the XXXI Venice Biennale.
Owing to his interest in space, he was commissioned to produce the only sculpture ever to be placed on the moon. In 1971 the crew of Apollo 15 placed Van Hoeydonck’s Fallen Astronaut on the moon surface, an opportunity granted to the artist that still remains unique today.
Van Hoeydonck’s work was always far ahead of its time. In 1990 Whitford Fine Art held a ground-breaking one-man show of Van Hoeydonck’s 1950’s work, but it is only today that Van Hoeydonck has finally claimed his place in Art History following the well received retrospective show at the Felix Art Museum in Drogenbos, Brussels in 2011.
Public collections include
Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna, Rome
Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Stedelijk Museum, Ostende
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Van Hoeydonck graduated in History of Art and Archaeology in his hometown of Antwerp, Belgium. Rooted in the period of Pop-Art, Op-art and Nouveau Realisme, he managed to devise a completely new oeuvre with his Space-Art. Throughout his career, Van Hoeydonck stood aside dominating styles and movements, and in over 50 years of activity, the concern of manhood and its interaction with the space has been central to his work.
During the 1950’s Van Hoeydonck's worked as a geometrical abstractionist. Colour was high on his agenda, and collages from the period often go into three dimensions. From this concretely constructed abstraction of reality, Van Hoeydonck moved to an extreme simplification in his white toy-reliefs of 1955-56. Movement and light-intervention gradually led him from spatial sensibility to space art during the early 1960s.
His most important works of the 1960s include the series Cities of the future, Spacescapes and White Planets (Planetscapes), which contained works that were in consonance with the space conquering race mood, which dominated the world at that time. Since an early age, Van Hoeydonck has harboured a particular interest in the moon and outer space. He started making unpopulated planets in 1959 and went on to make Constellations, Nebulae and Stardust in different shapes and out of different materials. By firing synthetic paint onto the panel, and letting the paint create its own spontaneous chemical reactions, Van Hoeydonck wished to imitate the effect of a meteor crashing into planet. His non-brush technique ranks amongst the revolutionary ZERO techniques of the time such as slashing canvas (Fontana), punctuating (Bonalumi, Piene and Uecker) and burning (Aubertin).
As the public failed to understand these exceptional works, Van Hoeydonck reacted with his series of so-called Boîtes à monocles, where boxes meant for precious objects, were filled with spectacle glasses - a provocative and humoured reference to the ‘blindness’ of people. During the period 1960-1962, Van Hoeydonck continued to with the found object. Following the ‘Boîtes à Monocles’, he fabricated ‘Bonshommes’ out of ready-mades, often found in the port of Antwerp. These robot-like creatures, consisting of wooden planks and metal objects, are pre-figurations of his later ‘Homo Spatiens’ and are contemporary to the British sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi’s humanoid creatures in bronze.
Although Van Hoeydonck was never officially a member of the Zero group, founded in Dusseldorf in 1957, he was always invited to exhibit at the group’s exhibitions in Germany and in Holland. In 1958, Van Hoeydonck was a co-founder of the G58 group who exhibited their works at the Hessenhuis, Antwerp. Van Hoeydonck was also the driving force behind the historic exhibition ‘Vision in Motion, Motion in Vision’ in 1959, which united the artists Yves Klein, Heinz Mack, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Soto and Van Hoeydonck. By the summer of 1962, Van Hoeydonck was a guest of honor at the XXXI Venice Biennale.
Owing to his interest in space, he was commissioned to produce the only sculpture ever to be placed on the moon. In 1971 the crew of Apollo 15 placed Van Hoeydonck’s Fallen Astronaut on the moon surface, an opportunity granted to the artist that still remains unique today.
Van Hoeydonck’s work was always far ahead of its time. In 1990 Whitford Fine Art held a ground-breaking one-man show of Van Hoeydonck’s 1950’s work, but it is only today that Van Hoeydonck has finally claimed his place in Art History following the well received retrospective show at the Felix Art Museum in Drogenbos, Brussels in 2011.
Public collections include
Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna, Rome
Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Stedelijk Museum, Ostende
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Provenance
Galerie Cogeime, Brussels.
Christie's, Brussels, collection of Benedict Goldschmidt, 13 December 1990, lot 160.
Private collection, London.
Exhibitions
1961, Galerie Cogeime, Brussels
1991, Paul Van Hoeydonck: Bonshommes et Boîtes à Monocles 1960 - 1961, The Collection of Adrian Mibus at Connaught Brown Gallery, London.
Literature
Paul Van Hoeydonck: Bonshommes et Boà Monocles 1960 - 1961, exhibition catalogue of the Collection of Adrian Mibus at Connaught Brown Gallery, London, 1991, ill. cat. no. 16.
Claire de Lune, The Independent Newspaper, 27 September 1991, ill.
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