Jef Diels

17th century techniques, executed to perfection

His passion started burning at a young age. When he was a child, he always carried pencil and paper, always ready to draw. This led him to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. “I found my place there, I had to become a painter”, he now says about the time.

Perhaps no one nowadays does what he does, executing 17th century techniques to perfection. Jef creates his works in three layers, just as the old masters did. The first layer is a monochrome under drawing. In the second layer the images get their color and shape. The third layer, in transparent paint, serves as a final touch: the atmosphere of his work takes definite shape by adding light and dark contrast and shadows. Painting, according to Jef, is taking advantage of the light. His works, once they have found their place on the wall, often don’t need an extra light source. With his mentor, Jan Eversen, Jef could muse for hours on the light and experiment with it for the following days.

Jef Diels’s works mainly show baroque versions, filled with an abundance of color of contemporary and everyday subject. It is only recently that his paintings evolved into more simple and still images. In real life he often seeks out the peace that nature is able to give, he says.

International career, from the US to Russia

Jef built out an impressive career, that started at the end of the seventies. High points were his exhibitions in Château & Manoir du lac, art dealer Noortman in Maastricht, TEFAF, Berko in Knokke, PAN Amsterdam, our gallery and the Art in Nature biennial in Schoten. Jef has traveled far and wide, such as to the US and Russia, where he had impressive exhibitions in the Nizhniy Novgorod State Art Museum in the Kremlin and the Gallery Lazarev in Saint-Petersburg. He has a lot of fans in Russia, that often pay visit to his atelier in Kalmthout.