Page 39 - Studio Internatinal - October 1974

(Left column top to bottom) Jo Delabaut Thy 1968
Guy Vandenbrandon Composition 1973 360 x 450 cm
Guy Baekelmans ArFol Acrylic on canvas, 120 x 150cm
Gilbert Decock Amaterasoe Oil on canvas
(Right column top to bottom) Jan van den Abbeel
Zigalumi I Aluminium, 170 x 170 cm
Mark Verstockt
Luc Peire Relief Mural 1968 400 x 380 cm
Jean Paul Laenen Ensemble d'organizations
complémentaires 1967 270 x 240 x 210 cm. Coll.
Muses Royaux des Beaux Arts, Brussels
Jacques Moeschal Signe Olympique, Mexico 1968
architects. While Laenen's conceptions become
functional in the daily life of a society,
Moeschal's forms maintain their role of signs or
signals, like so many examples of the written
word along motorways, in urban or desert
sites. While Laenen's involvement is social and
concrete, Moeschal's remains aesthetic and
spiritual. But in the conception of the architect
which Moeschal holds, this involvement is
with the whole of our modern environment.

Structure
Since it is the fundamental basis of every
construction, structure is not for that very
reason always obvious. If it is, it can be seen as
the structure of a form, a colour, a material or a
movement.

Structure of a form
For Albert Rubens, it is the conception of a
structure which forms the basis of his
construction in black and white and not the
optical effect which can result. The structure
he conceives corresponds to the nature of a
form, to its relation with another form, or the
surrounding space. Isn't this an example of an
evocative or communicative structure, since it
corresponds to a pictorial writing, enabling the
viewer to communicate with the content, with
the real form evoked? The 'signifier' identifies
with the 'signified', enabling a visual
understanding and reflection. By the side of this
rational way of approaching a structure, there is
another more intuitive means, sought through
the analysis of a form or a colour and defined
as 'silent art'. Raoul de Keyzer, whose earlier
works belonged to a new figuration, explores in
recent works the field of the canvas as an enormous
sky or stretch of land, where luminous lines
are traced by a gentle gradation of colours or
the reminder of a horizon. The underlying
thread of the canvas is hidden, shows itself or is
hinted at, according to the direction of a green
or another colour, and the pencil stroke reaches
an unsuspected intensity, when it structures a
sheet of paper. Intuition corrects technique and
method, when the latter threatens to move in. The pictorial space exhales a sensitive dimension. graduations in colour evoke certain natural
It is spiritual intuition when Dan van Severen As with Rubens, the signified identifies with phenomena. 'Colour is light, and light is heat.'
quotes an eighteenth-century Chinese painter: the signifier, not in a visual reflection, but in a Sometimes this vibrant space is reconstructed
'Drawing a single line is not such a simple thing; spiritual union. and controlled by the cutting of a line. While
your heart must be great and empty.' In a for Verheyen, structure and chromatic silence
tonality of grey, against brown, blue or violet Structure of a colour are linked with nature, for Andre Beullens,
grounds, the simplicity of the craft and the If the chromatic structure of a canvas they are linked with man. Through his
authenticity of the forms — the square, the encounters this same silence, Jef Verheyen `Chromatic Circle', he seeks to create a
circle, and the cross — evoke a meditative tension. gives a spatial meaning. His scarcely discernible surrounding well-being. 'I felt the need to try
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