Antiquaire

A modern vision on today’s antiquaire

For more than half a century, the Axel Vervoordt Company’s relationship with art and antiques has been a way to share our experiences of the world. We believe the best way to full inhabit a space is by being surrounded by architecture, furniture, art, and objects that are represented by the honesty of their materials and the purity of intent in their creation.

Axel Vervoordt was named Officier des Arts et des Lettres by Ms. Hélène Farnaud-Defromont, Ambassador of France in Belgium, during a ceremony at Castle of 's-Gravenwezel.

The way one looks at things is of the utmost importance. Seeing is feeling with the eyes.

Shimamoto was born in 1928, in the Yahataya district of Minato Ward, Osaka, to parents who worked in the shipping industry. He enrolled in the philosophy department at Kwansei Gakuin University in 1947. Though he did not receive any formal education in art, he won an award in the All Kansai Exhibition for a painting he made around the time he entered university.

This fragmentary red granite head in all likelihood depicts either a royal figure or a deity. The archaizing features of the triangular face are delicately sculpted, featuring a broad nose, prominent cheekbones and a rounded chin. The fleshy lips are pursed into a serene smile, further accentuated by the indented corners of the mouth.

Uecker’s art tends towards sculpture simply because of the way it is made. Objects such as canvas, wood, tables, chairs and pianos studded with nails produce something organic, spore-like and animated in their rhythmic structuring. By being studded with nails, in principle an aggressively destructive act, the object is deprived of its utilitarian function to become a symbolically condensed object for representation. In Untitled (Weißes Bild), the energy and dynamic are discernible which distinguish Uecker’s work. The creative process is almost palpable.

Piene was one of the artists who wanted to transform the traumas of the Second World War into optimism, renewal, and prosperity. This was also one of the basic ideas of the ZERO group he co-founded in 1957 together with Heinz Mack and later with Günther Uecker. ZERO was "the incommensurable zone in which the old state turns into the new", or, as Piene said: "ZERO expresses the human yearning to create a new world in spite of apparent chaos and the seeming fruitlessness of the endeavor, to build with what Nature provides us and with human ingenuity, with universal energy and with technology."

Desk in walnut

View selected objects

Antiquaire

A modern vision on today’s antiquaire

Shozo Shimamoto, "Armor"", 1960

Head of a god or royal figure

Günther Uecker, "Untitled (Weißes Bild)", 1959

Otto Piene, Untitled, 1973

Desk

Antiquaire

A modern vision on today’s antiquaire

Selected objects