{"id":252667,"date":"2026-01-26T16:17:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T16:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/252667\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T16:17:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T16:17:12","slug":"the-architect-never-sent-an-invoice-he-just-wanted-paintings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/252667\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The architect never sent an invoice; he just wanted paintings\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s snow underfoot on the January day that I visit L\u00e9on Wuidar. On the outskirts of the Belgian town of Esneux, on a hill climbing up from the Ourthe Valley, the winter vista lends a chilly severity to the brutalist <\/a>building that has been home to the artist for half a century. What from the outside resembles a wartime concrete bunker is on the inside, however, radiantly churchlike<\/a>. It\u2019s sparse but serene, purist but playful: a space inspired by Wuidar\u2019s geometric abstraction <\/a>\u2014 as interpreted by the late Belgian architect Charles Vandenhove.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very simple, very grounded, very monastic, you could say,\u201d says Wuidar, warm in both manner and dress, in a tomato-red cardigan. At the age of 87, he is experiencing something of an Indian summer in his career. His work was relatively unknown until a decade ago, when he was signed by Brussels-based gallery Rodolphe Janssen. He\u2019s also since been taken on by White Cube and last week opened a solo show in Paris \u2014 his fifth with the gallery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ConcreteThe home, which consists of two buildings, is the vision of Belgian architect Charles Vandenhove <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a fantastic surprise when Jay [Jopling] and I discovered L\u00e9on\u2019s work,\u201d says White Cube global director Mathieu Paris. \u201cThere\u2019s an exactitude and consistency to his paintings, but he does it with humour. There\u2019s a very Belgian, quasi-surrealist side to some.\u201d In 2023, the Centre Pompidou added three of Wuidar\u2019s paintings to its collection. \u201cAnd it\u2019s just the beginning,\u201d says Paris, alluding to further institutional acquisitions in the pipeline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wuidar was born in the nearby city of Li\u00e8ge, where he lived in the apartment above the family business, a manufacturing enterprise creating workwear for local miners and factory employees started by Wuidar\u2019s grandmother. Growing up in postwar Belgium, his upbringing was \u201ctraditional, strict and Catholic\u201d, he recalls. \u201cMy parents weren\u2019t curious, but I was.\u201d From the age of 12, he knew he wanted to be an artist \u2014 a conviction that was cemented, he says, when he discovered the work of modern British artist Ben Nicholson.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AExposed concrete block walls meet a statement stepped ceiling above Barcelona chairs by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. On the wall to the left is \u2018Painting No 513\u2019 by Luis Feito (1965) <\/p>\n

From 1960 to 2000, he worked as a teacher of drawing and graphic art, while developing his own creative practice. Self-taught, his studies of structure and colour evolved from the figurative to the abstract, and ranged from the minimal to the somewhat mystical.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an exactitude and consistency to his paintings, but he does it with a lot of humour. There\u2019s a very Belgian, quasi-surrealist side to some<\/p>\n

Mathieu Paris, White Cube global director<\/p>\n

Today his studio is a hive of daily activity and is physically central to his home. It sits at one end of a building dating to the 1970s \u2014 a space where exposed concrete block walls meet a statement stepped ceiling \u2014 and connects to a three-storey structure added in the 1990s. Both are the work of Vandenhove, commissioned by Wuidar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe met in the 1960s at a gallery opening but we already knew each other\u2019s work,\u201d says Wuidar. The house wasn\u2019t, however, much of a collaboration: \u201cVandenhove is an architect who would never accept input, but he was sensitive to my work, which is why [the building] is the way it is,\u201d he explains. Wuidar\u2019s home and his creations have the same regimented angularity.<\/p>\n

\"ASix iterations of the design were made before Vandenhove and Wuidar settled on the seventh: \u2018He is an architect who would never accept input, but he was sensitive to my work, which is why [the building] is the way it is,\u2019 says Wuidar \"AThe 1990s addition was prompted by a need for more storage space <\/p>\n

It was also not a straightforward project: over a period of two years, Vandenhove produced six different designs. \u201cThen when we were meeting to go over the final details, he said, \u2018L\u00e9on, I need more time, I have to start all over again.\u2019 It hit me hard.\u201d It was worth the wait, though; \u201cThis one, the seventh, is the best of them all,\u201d says Wuidar with glee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Construction overlapped with that of another bold \u2014 and significantly bigger \u2014\u00a0 Vandenhove building nearby: the Sart-Tilman University Hospital in Li\u00e8ge. Its striking tiered composition, in glass, steel and concrete, was augmented inside with numerous artist interventions, including those by French conceptualist Daniel Buren and US minimalist Sol LeWitt. Wuidar covered the walls of the dialysis department with a motif based on a line drawing of his from 1978. He was also able to piggyback the project in terms of materials \u2014 Burgundy limestone floor tiles, for instance, were bought in bulk and used in both hospital and home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AThe studio is at one end of the main 1970s building; the bookcase is a design by Vandenhove <\/p>\n

\u201cBut when the house was finished, Charles Vandenhove never sent me an invoice,\u201d says Wuidar. Instead of his fee, \u201che just told me that he wanted two paintings \u2014 he chose two very nice ones, but I didn\u2019t feel it was enough. So I also sent him a number of original drawings.\u201d One of them was later recreated by the architect on an enamel-topped table, designed for the restaurant in a retirement home \u2014 an example of the table now resides in one of Wuidar\u2019s bedrooms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are other design pieces by Vandenhove, too: a round walnut dining table and chairs and, above them, an octagonal ceiling light in blue and white glass; a simple, double-stemmed steel standing lamp and a custom bookcase. Paintings by Wuidar hang throughout the home. There are artworks that play with language and typography; some that incorporate Egyptian motifs; many that resemble architectural structures and volumes. He changes them around often. <\/p>\n

\u201cI rediscover them \u2014 you can speak about \u2018the collection\u2019, or you can use another term. It\u2019s my source of business. My stock,\u201d he says with a smile. <\/p>\n

\"AVandenhove designed furniture as well as the house, such as this dining table and chairs and, above them, the octagonal ceiling light \"AClean, angular lines in the kitchen <\/p>\n

The new show focuses on his work from the 1960s and 1970s. Paris pinpoints \u201cLa naissance de V\u00e9nus, 13 juin 1966\u201d as a highlight; \u201cit\u2019s one of the largest formats L\u00e9on ever worked on, in a very monochromatic painting,\u201d he says of the grey-on-grey canvas. \u201cThis grisaille refers to so many north European paintings since the Renaissance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since the late 1950s, every one of Wuidar\u2019s pieces has been framed in the same way, with a thin piece of wood \u2014 a feature that is echoed in the simple wooden door frames of his home. \u201cHe has framed his life in the same way that he frames his paintings,\u201d says Paris. <\/p>\n

But despite the austerity of the design, the place is full of life. Wuidar raised two daughters here with his first wife, Francine Boulanger, who died in 1990. Now he shares the space with his wife Mich\u00e8le Rots. Sometimes they live in one building, sometimes in the other, she says. Bookshelves overflow, wine is brought out with lunch, and the geometric Austrian-made cutlery that Wuidar bought when he first married in the late 1960s is put to good use.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A\u2018It\u2019s very simple, very grounded, very monastic,\u2019 says Wuidar; one of his artworks, \u2018Mars\u2019 (1971), above the bed \"A\u2018Signes\u2019 (May 1979) by Wuidar; some of his works play with language and typography while others resemble architectural structures <\/p>\n

The 1990s addition (for which Vandenhove did send an invoice, \u201ca significant one\u201d) was prompted by a need for more storage space, and now Wuidar\u2019s \u201cstock\u201d room takes up the lion\u2019s share of the ground floor. Alongside the racks of canvases, a shelf holds \u201cmemories of his life since childhood\u201d. It includes a chintzy ceramic ashtray from his grandparents and an antique English mustard pot, alongside his own creations: an old glass pharmacy jar, for instance, is filled with colourfully painted wooden batons \u2014 \u201cMy idea was that if medicine makes people feel better, art can too.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A watercolour above the doorway, meanwhile, is by Sol LeWitt \u2014 the result of a written correspondence with the famed minimalist about the formation of a star motif in their work. \u201cI received a postcard from Sol saying simply, \u2018How did you construct yours?\u2019\u201d Wuidar recalls. \u201cI responded by letter, with drawings, and one day I received a big envelope in the mail containing this present.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LeonWuidar with his wife Mich\u00e8le Rots: sometimes they live in one building, sometimes in the other, she says; above them hangs a gandoura, a traditional Nupe garment from Nigeria <\/p>\n

Up on the second floor, either side of a vast double-height window, are two small relief sculptures by the 83-year-old abstract British artist John Carter. For the most part, though, the pieces by other artists don\u2019t reveal household names. There\u2019s a framed Congolese textile work that he admires for its inventiveness and two carved wooden sculptures by Joseph Wiliquet, a local artist with whom he exchanged work in the 1960s. In his bedroom, a tiny, intricate drawing is the work of little-known Belgian artist Marcel Lempereur-Haut, while his studio is home to a richly coloured and \u201cvery strange\u201d canvas by Henri-Jean Closon, who worked as a butcher and painted in his spare time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Wuidar\u2019s affinity with such outsider artists is apparent. His own steadfast commitment to his artistic vision is present in every inch of his idiosyncratic home \u2014 and, increasingly, far beyond.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018L\u00e9on Wuidar\u2019, White Cube Paris, until February 21; whitecube.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow @ft_houseandhome<\/a> on Instagram<\/p>\n