Archivio Conz

Michel Seuphor (1901 Antwerp, Belgium – 1999 Paris, France), born Ferdinand Louis Berckelaers, was an art critic, historian, painter, and poet. His artistic and critical contributions advocating for abstract art made him a leading reference for the artistic literature of his time. He founded the modernist literary magazine Het Overzicht, publishing twenty-four issues between 1921 and 1925. Later settling in Paris in 1929, he co-founded–together with Joaquín Torres García–the Cercle et Carré movement, bringing together artists who shared an adherence to abstract-concrete research. During his career, Seuphor worked on several exhibitions devoted to abstract art, publishing exceptional catalogues considered today as essential sources for understanding and historicizing this visual expression. Parallel to his work as a critic, Seuphor produced autograph lacunary ink drawings marked by compositions of abstract geometries and narrow horizontal lines. The production of these pieces, initially in black and white, intensified around the 1950s, gradually incorporating different colors and looser forms. The editions produced with Francesco Conz in 1990 reflect this facet of Seuphor’s oeuvre. Seuphor’s works have been the focus of comprehensive retrospectives at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1977), the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague (1977), and the Ludwig Museum in Koblenz (1997), as well as the most recent exhibition at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (2022).