A universal language

During his training at the Antwerp academy, Jef Verheyen’s greatest discovery is the ceramics class and it is there that he meets Dani Franque, his future spouse. Together they travel to the ceramic workshops in the Southern French village of Vallauris, where Pablo Picasso also had his workshop. There they become familiar with the age-old basic forms of this craft. In 1955 Verheyen and Franque open their own ceramics studio in Antwerp. Its walls are graced with pictures of their sources of inspiration: a photo of Picasso hangs among photos of pre-Columbian and tribal sculptures; Indonesian dancers hang next to the cave paintings of Lascaux.

In the mid-1950s Verheyen rediscovers his love of painting. The atlas of images on his studio wall reminds him of the mystical ‘primal function’ of art. As Verheyen puts it: ‘Everyone can “feel” painting, everyone speaks our language… or at least, everyone is a conveyor of its primal forms.’