PIETER VERMEERSCH

Early Years

Born in Kortrijk, Belgium, in 1973, Pieter Vermeersch grew up in a family of artists—his father was a painter, his grandfather a sculptor. He trained at Ghent’s Higher Institute for Visual Arts, later earning a post-graduate degree from the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Antwerp in 2001. Developing an early interest in geology and architecture, Vermeersch has maintained a keen sensitivity to materials and place. He currently lives and works between Brussels, Belgium and Turin, Italy, where his engagement with Arte Povera and historical architecture continues to inform his practice.

Pieter Vermeersch Artworks

Pieter Vermeersch’s art is characterised by a search for painting’s ‘degree zero’, exploring how colour, matter, space, and time interact across a diversity of supports and scales. Through a precise, nearly mathematical process, Vermeersch employs painting as an instrument to create images fluctuating between abstraction and figuration, often referencing photographic sources but liberating the painted surface from narrative or literal meaning.

Gradient Paintings and Wall Works

Vermeersch is best known for his luminous gradient paintings, meticulously blending pigment into seamless fields that appear to shimmer and dissolve as the viewer moves. These works range from canvases to expansive wall paintings created directly on architectural surfaces, their subtle transitions of colour evoking skies, atmospheric conditions, and the passage of time. The technical process conceals any trace of the artist’s hand, immersing the viewer in pure perception.

Painting on Stone and Photographic Works

Since 2017, Vermeersch has incorporated marble, agate, and other stones as both substrate and subject. Chiselling, milling, and sometimes silkscreening photographic images of stone surfaces onto the material, Vermeersch activates a dialogue between geology’s deep time and the fleeting nature of brushwork. Some works feature delicate paint interventions atop marble slabs, merging ancient matter with contemporary gesture.

Architectural Installations and Space Interventions

Vermeersch often creates monumental site-specific works, such as immersive wall paintings for public spaces like the Schuman metro station in Brussels or installations for international museums and architectural landmarks. These interventions recalibrate the viewer’s physical and psychological relationship to space, dissolving the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and the built environment.

Select Public Commissions

• Monumental gradient wall and spatial interventions at Schuman Metro Station, Brussels.
• Site-specific works for Galeries Lafayette, Biarritz; Solo House Office KGDVS, Matarraña; Silos a sel, Genève.

Select Awards and Accolades

• Young Belgian Painters Award, 2007
• AICA Prize for Most Remarkable Exhibition, Belgium (with Eva Wittocx, M-Museum, Leuven, 2019)
• Works held in public collections: S.M.A.K., Ghent; M HKA, Antwerp; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; European Central Bank, Frankfurt; Flemish Parliament, Brussels; among others

Exhibitions

Pieter Vermeersch has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions at major institutions worldwide. Below is a selection of important exhibitions.

Solo Exhibitions

• (((()))), Perrotin, New York (2025)
• Palazzo Borromeo Antonini Milano, Milan (2023)
• M-Museum, Leuven, Belgium (2019)
• NC-arte, Bogotá, Colombia (2019)
• Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent (2015)

Group Exhibitions

• S.M.A.K., Ghent (2025)
• KMSKA Royal Museum for Fine Arts, Antwerp (2024)
• Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence (2024)
• Fondation Prada, Venice (2023)
• Fondation CAB, Brussels (2022)
• Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2018)
• Parasol Unit, London (2016)

More Reading

Vermeersch’s practice has been profiled in Ocula Magazine. You can read his interview with Paul Laster here.

Pieter Vermeersch FAQs

Ocula | 2025