Collection: Jan Vercruysse

Jan Vercruysse (1948–2018) was a Belgian artist whose work engaged with absence, melancholy, and the limits of representation. Working across sculpture, photography, installation, and works on paper, he produced an austere and rigorously self-contained body of work that resisted easy categorisation. His practice drew on the traditions of Minimalism and Conceptualism while maintaining a distinctly European, literary sensibility — one attuned to loss, displacement, and the impossibility of full presence.

Vercruysse’s major series include the Tombeaux (tombs), the Atopies, and the Portraits — works that circle around the idea of the monument, the archive, and the trace. His sculptures often employed precious or resistant materials — marble, bronze, glass — in configurations that suggested ceremony without content, or commemoration without a named subject.

He represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale in 1990 and exhibited widely across Europe, with presentations at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Kunsthalle Zürich, and numerous galleries and institutions. His work is held in major public collections across Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Germany.

The New Rare holds printed matter and exhibition ephemera related to Jan Vercruysse, including invitation cards, catalogues, and publications from exhibitions spanning his career.