Press release:
MARCEL VERHOFSTADT

Colour above all, colour that explodes from the frames and makes the walls sing: Verhofstadt is certainly one of the most genuine masters of colour in modern Belgian painting. Thirty or so large paintings, seemingly big works even when they’re physically small. The colours are radiant, making the shapes seem larger, imposing their own order of magnitude, their own rules for shaping space. The colour is not only there to stimulate the retina. It is also a construct, with the blues, greens and reds playing together, being ordered, taking their proper places and creating distance and depth. Colours that tell of the hustle and bustle of scooters and racing cars, the inner warmth, the whitewashed walls of a farm under the rounded swell of big clouds, a Spanish sierra rising skywards, or a tramp lying next to his friend the owl and dreaming. A dozen watercolours as well, in which, behind the apparent simplicity of the medium, the authority of the painter can be seen, imposing a vocabulary that is suitable for talking about trees, hills, fields, or wet and dry. All with a rare synthetic skill, leading us straight to the essence, to the powerful forces that vitalise and define the landscape. Verhofstadt is thus more than a mere witness; instead he is more of a “builder” with a disdain for the frivolous and the volatile, a “maintainer”. And this is very valuable in a time when a certain degree of nihilism in painting is hiding childish behaviour (though not very well), like a child that breaking its toy because it doesn’t know how to use it.

Jean Cimaise (Drapeau Rouge, 30-Mar-1977)

Magazine article in French