Camiel Van Breedam (born 29 June 1936, Boom) is regarded as one of the most versatile and independent-minded artists of his generation. In 1958 he was among the youngest members of the progressive artists’ collective G58, became a laureate of the Jeune Peinture Belge, and felt more closely connected to Mouvement Phases, founded in France by Edouard Jaguer, alongside artists such as Andrzej Meissner and Jacques Lacomblez.
His oeuvre spans an impressive range of forms: assemblages, collages, reliefs, objects, sculptures, constructions, and environments. He consistently works with a broad variety of materials — wood, paper, and metal — most often remnants and cast-offs that already bear traces of use. These ‘worn’ materials, with their tangible history and patina, form the foundation of Van Breedam’s visual language.
The artist’s sources of inspiration are equally diverse: his father’s plumbing workshop, the Rupel region with its vanished brickyards, the sea and nature, but also the injustices inflicted upon Native Americans, the aesthetics of the 1920s–1930s, the Russian avant-garde, and the Bauhaus. Ethnic art, New Orleans jazz, and the influence of artists such as Paul Klee, Chaïm Soutine, Joseph Cornell, Oskar Schlemmer, and Georges Vantongerloo also play a significant role. Dreams and nightmares, and above all the color red, appear time and again as powerful symbols.
What unites his multifaceted work is a profound social commitment — the red thread running through an artistic practice that for nearly seventy years has been sustained by curiosity, imagination, and critical reflection.
During the summer of 2022, we presented a combination of works from his oeuvre alongside works from other artists in his private collection. In 2024, the exhibition entitled ‘Towers, Stairs and Steps...’ was on view.
*This autumn, from September 13 until October 12, 2025, Art Partout will showcase a combination of brand-new works and never-before-seen drawings from the early 1950s: ‘Early Lines – New Forms’.
See also : artpartout.gallery