Signed and dated at bottom right, this 1953 oil on canvas is among the earliest works by Paul Van Hoeydonck in this collection, predating his shift to abstraction and painted the year after his first solo exhibition at Galerie Buyle in Antwerp. It was shown in the 2020–21 exhibition 'Unseen' in Knokke and is published in two monographs on the artist.

Paul Van Hoeydonck (1925–2025) studied art history in Antwerp before turning to painting, exhibiting figurative harbour scenes and industrial landscapes at his first solo show in 1952. Within a few years he had moved into geometric abstraction, joining the Formes group in 1956 and co-founding the Antwerp avant-garde collective G58 with Jef Verheyen.

The dawn of the Space Age redirected his imagination: from the late 1950s onward, planets, cities and astronauts became his recurring subjects, rendered in white-on-white reliefs, plexiglass and collage. In 1971, at the invitation of NASA, the crew of Apollo 15 placed his aluminium sculpture 'Fallen Astronaut' on the lunar surface — a tribute to astronauts and cosmonauts who had died in the pursuit of space exploration, and to this day the only artwork ever installed beyond Earth.

Details

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 100 × 72.6 × 2.5 cm
• Signed and dated: bottom right hand corner