Le jardin télégraphe, J. Zimmermann

Abstract painting with geometric lines signed Jacques Zimmermann, 1983.

Oil on canvas in a metal frame.

Format: 60 x 60 cm.

Jacques Zimmermann dit Zim (1929 – 2024)

Born in Antwerp in 1929, Jacques Zimmermann quickly settled with his family in Brussels. It was there that he discovered the Flemish and Dutch landscape painters. He began his studies at the Institut Saint-Luc in Brussels.

He began to exhibit in 1951 at the bookstore-gallery Saint-Laurent of Philippe-Edouard Toussaint, where many young innovative artists (Léopold Plomteux, Jo Delahaut, Jean Milo, Camiel Van Breedaem, Jacques Lacomblez, Marie Carlier, etc…) met.

He participated in a theatre company for one year in Africa (1955-1956), which marked his work by the discovery of exuberant nature that would remain a recurring source of inspiration (“Jacques Zimmermann”, on Éditions Syllepse).

He joined, in 1957, the “Phases” movement, founded in Paris by Edouard Jagner in 1952 – 1953, which adopted the ethics of surrealism. Indeed, Zim’s artistic work was initially nourished by the magical realism of Chirico’s paintings.

From 1956 to 1994, he was appointed professor of composition in drawing at the Institut supérieur de Saint-Luc in Brussels.

Around 1970, abstraction gave way to a dreamlike figuration dominated by ambiguous beings, barely uncluttered from their abstract soil, half insects, half theatrical characters.

In the 1980s, he exhibited mainly at the International Art Gallery of Lasne. In 1990, he participated in the exhibition “Phases -Belgique”, in Mons, alongside former collaborators of the magazine Edda.

In 1996, a retrospective of his work was organized at the Schaerbeek municipal council (Jacques immermann, Itinéraires , exhibition catalogue).

In 2001, he was elected member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Belgium.

In 2014, he was the recipient of the Gaston Bertrand Prize, rewarding “a Belgian painter at least 45 years old, having his own approach and means invented by him, to make visible his inner world”. On this occasion, a major retrospective takes place at the Centre d’art du Rouge-Cloître (“Jacques Zimmermann – Laureate of the Gaston Bertrand Prize”).

He likes to explore a powerfully dreamlike world that is located at the crossroads of invented forms and imaginary landscape. His paintings consist of plant and mineral sensations, sometimes bathed by the reddening sun or the cold gleams of the northern lights.

He will paint until the end of his life.

Works in the collections of: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mons, Crédit Communal de Bruxelles, Banque Bruxelles-Lambert, Belgian State, Royal Museum of Mariemont, Province of Hainaut, Free University of Brussels.