Portrait of the artist

Paul van Hoeydonck

(1925-)

In principle, Hoeydonck, despite studies in Antwerp and Brussels, trains and develops himself as an autodidact. He had his first solo exhibition in 1952 and subsequently lived alternately in the USA and Belgium.
He became really famous in 1964 when he participated in the Documenta III in Kassel and especially in 1971 when he was the first artist to be commissioned to create a work of art for the moon mission Apollo 15. The statuette was placed at the landing site near the Hadley Apennines.
His works from the 1950s and 1960s can be seen in the context of the Zero movement. While most of the other Zero artists created similar works for decades, making them easy for galleries to promote (and today they reach prices of up to one million), Van Hoeydonck was too versatile and therefore too difficult to grasp.