M HKA Ensembles

Print, 98 x 98 cm.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. S0330_11).

Among the visual poems in which the limited typography of the typewriter has been relinquished in favour of a highly developed graphic elaboration of the text, one finds one of De Vree’s most famous poems, Revolutie (1968). The letters are arranged in a circle and each letter is halved. The inner half has been shifted slightly to the right in relation to the outer half. This displacement of the word image yields a distorted visual pattern, which, precisely through its disruptive character, summarises the essence of a revolution. Both the word and the concept (break, shift, rotation) are here turned into images. Ton Luiting and Wim Van Mulders consider Revolutie the quintessence of De Vree’s oeuvre. Van Mulders points to the meaning of revolution as the birth of something new and the need for the revolution to remain in perpetual movement. He thereby underlines the ‘(r)evolutionary’ aspect of De Vree’s oeuvre.