Decoratief paneel voor het restaurant van het station van Guillemins in Luik, ca. 1956 (inv. 0576) by Jean Rets

Made around 1956 as a decorative plexiglass panel for the restaurant of Liège's Guillemins railway station, this work sits at the intersection of Jean Rets's fine-art practice and his career as a designer of large-scale public commissions. Born in Paris in 1910 as Jean-Baptiste Retserveldt to a family with roots in Liège, Rets returned to Belgium as a child and briefly studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Liège. After a formative encounter with Victor Vasarely in Paris in 1951, he moved decisively toward abstraction and became a central figure of Wallonia's constructed-art scene, co-founding his own studio, the Atelier d'Art Jean Rets, in 1948, which grew to employ up to twenty-five craftspeople producing paintings, sculpture and public artworks for clients ranging from Belgian cigarette brands to the national telephone authority. It has been shown at the Maurice Verbaet Gallery's 2017 opening exhibition in Knokke, at LAAC Dunkerque in 2022, and at BRAFA 2026, and is published in Michel Draguet's 2012 survey of Belgian art. Details Material: Plexiglass Dimensions: 44 × 125.5 cm Exhibitions: Maurice Verbaet Gallery, Knokke, Belgium — Openingstentoonstelling — 28/10/2017–15/03/2018 · Maurice Verbaet Gallery, Knokke, Belgium — Under construction — 04/2019 · Lieu d'Art et Action Contemporaine (LAAC), Dunkerque, France — Collection Maurice Verbaet 'Belgitudes' — 01/04/2022–18/09/2022 · Maurice Verbaet Gallery, BRAFA Art Fair 2026 — 22/01/2026 – 02/02/2026 Publications: Michel Draguet, Art belge. Un siècle moderne — Collection Caroline et Maurice Verbaet, Bruxelles, Racine, 2012, p. 143. This artwork forms part of the maurice verbaet collection and can be viewed in our showroom at Volkstraat 58, Antwerp.