, 1957), is a Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 painter, living and working in Ghent

Ghent

Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...

.

Biography

Vandekerckhove was graduaded from the University of Ghent in 1979 with a degree in art history

Art history

Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...

, having concentrated on the works of David Hockney

David Hockney

David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....

. In 1983, he was awarded the Prix de la Jeune Peinture ("Young Artist's Award") in Brussels.

From 1989 to 1996, Vandekerckhove temporarly stayed in Tuscany

Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....

 where he was exposed to the artworks of Cimabue

Cimabue

Cimabue , also known as Bencivieni di Pepo or in modern Italian, Benvenuto di Giuseppe, was an Italian painter and creator of mosaics from Florence....

, Giotto

Giotto di Bondone

Giotto di Bondone , better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages...

 and Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca

Piero della Francesca was a painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists, to contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized by its...

. A studio fire in 1990 destroyed his works from this period.

In 1997, he visited Dungeness and discovered the avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 filmmaker, Derek Jarman

Derek Jarman

Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener and author.-Life:...

.

In 2003, Vandekerckhove mounted a solo exhibition at the Mu.Zee

Mu.ZEE

The Mu.ZEE is a museum in Ostend specialized in Belgian art from 1830 on. It was created in 2008 from the former Provinciaal Museum voor Moderne Kunst and the Museum voor Schone Kunsten Oostende , both located in Ostend...

, modern art museum in Oostende entitled Stalking Hiëronymus. These works were inspired by the Hieronymus Bosch painting St. Jerome at Prayer and by the film Stalker

Stalker (film)

Stalker is a 1979 science fiction film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, with a screenplay written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, loosely based on their novel Roadside Picnic...

by Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director, widely regarded as one of the finest filmmakers of the 20th century....

.

In 2007 he mounted a show of recent paintings at City Museum for Modern Art in Ghent. He was also featured in a dual exhibition alongside Juan Muñoz

Juan Muñoz

Juan Muñoz was a Spanish sculptor, working primarily in paper maché, resin and bronze. He was also interested in the auditory arts and created compositions for the radio. He was a self-described "storyteller"...

at the Fundacion Ambères, Madrid.

In 2009 he mounted a solo show, Stichting Liedts-Meesen at the Zebrastraat in Ghent.

External links

Hans Vandekerckhove