Belgian artist Jan Vercruysse dies at 69

Jan Vercruysse, a leading Belgian artist born in Ostend in 1948, has died at age 69. His gallery, Xavier Hufkens, confirmed the news to Artribune; death likely occurred on Tuesday but was announced only today. No cause was given. Vercruysse began as a poet in the late 1960s while studying law, transitioning to visual art in the mid-1970s using books, exhibition catalogs, and typographic elements. His international breakthrough came in the 1980s and 1990s, notably through Italy: a solo show at Castello di Rivoli in 1992 and representation of Belgium at the 1993 Venice Biennale. He worked with reflective surfaces, opaque glass, polished wood, drawings, and photographs, creating sculptural assemblages that eternalize objects with history. A key series from the 1980s, Tombeaux, comprises glass wind instruments that produce silence instead of sound, inverting their original function. Vercruysse opposed art as message-bearing, treating each work as a phrase in a broader visual discourse, akin to poetry. He worked in cycles, repeating subjects to strip away self-celebration and deconstruct meaning, with absence becoming a constant presence.