Paul Van Hoeydonck ( 1925 )

Paul Van Hoeydonck graduated in History of Art and Archaeology in his hometown of Antwerp. Rooted in the period of Pop-Art, Op-art and Nouveau Realisme, he managed to devise a completely new oeuvre with his Space-Art. In over 50 years of activity, the concern of manhood and its interaction with the space has been central to his work. His most important works of the 1960s include the series Cities of the future, Spacescapes and White Planets (Planetscapes), which contained works that were in consonance with the space conquering race mood, which dominated the world at that time. He made unpopulated planets, constellations, nebulae and stardust in different shapes and out of different materials. He used techniques such as firing synthetic paint onto a panel and letting the paint create its own spontaneous chemical reactions, in order to imitate the effect of a meteor crashing into planet. Van Hoeydonck was also commissioned to produce the only sculpture ever to be placed on the moon. In 1971 the crew of Apollo 15 placed his Fallen Astronaut on the moon’s surface, as a memorial to all the astronauts and cosmonauts that died in the advancement of space exploration.

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