914 - Ferdinand Vonck, abstract composition, collage on wood, signed and dated 1957

Ferdinand Vonck, abstract composition, collage on wood, signed and dated 1957 (1921 – 2010), collage on wood, signed 'F. Vonck' and dated 57 lower right. On a narrow, upright rectangular support small pieces of form are assembled into a strict vertical order: rectangles, bars and strips in broken white, grey, ochre and several shades of blue lie offset one above the other and leave narrow strips of the pale ground free between them. At about half height a circular reserve interrupts the vertical, through which the pale ground becomes visible; in the lower third a deep blue sets a point of rest. The surface is stepped like a relief and shows the edges of the applied pieces. Age-appropriate good condition, slightly rubbed. Image 80 x 15 cm (HxW), framed in a narrow moulding, frame width 1 cm Ferdinand Vonck was a Belgian sculptor whose work mediates between sculpture and pictorial surface; his works of the 1950s belong in the context of European post-war abstraction, in which collage and the material picture took the place of painted illusion. The extreme upright format treats the pictorial surface like a stele: the composition is conceived not as a window but as an upright body along which the eye moves from bottom to top. Vonck's works are traded internationally, among others at Cornette de Saint Cyr in Brussels.