Jos de Mey: Illusionistische Malerei

A great book Jos de Mey: Illusionistische Malerei was issued by Edition Virgines in Düsseldorf in 2010. The book describes the life and work of Belgian artist Jos de Mey who devoted his life to drawing impossible figures.

Jos de Mey (1928-2007) studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Ghent (Belgium). Then he spent 39 year to teaching interrior design and color there. Since 1968 he had concentrated in art. He spent a lot of time on the image of various mathematical relations such as golden section and Fibonacci sequence. He created many artworks with Pythagoras trees. In the past of 1970s he began to draw impossible figures. He depicted very realistic impossible figures in traditional Flemish environment.

The book contains 235 images of artworks of Jos de Mey from private collections. Images cover entire period of his creativity work from 1960s until his end. Also, the book contains full artist biography with 30 photos of Jos de Mey, bibliography, articles of Jos de Mey and his friends. Changing of artist's style can be traced in the chronilogical artwork index.

You can buy the book at Edition Virgines or at Amazon.de.

Below, you can see some photos of the book.

Calendar 2010

Today I would like to promote an outstanding issue, to which I attended. It's a bloc-calendar with illusions. Every page contains unique graphic work, photo or photomanipulation image with illusion or impossible figure. Arworks of such famous artists as M.C. Escher, Jos de Mey, Sandro del Prete, Istvan Orosz, Oscar Reutersvärd and many many others. Also, some my figures were printed in the calendar too.

The bloc-calendar was created in Paul Baars Design studio. Most of the Dutch museums will have it in their shops.

Jos de Mey has died

With deep regret I should report that in December 22th 2007 the great man and the famous Belgian artist Jos de Mey has died.

He was one of the most famous artists in imp-art. His name have always been referred along with another Holland artist M.C. Escher. Jos de Mey was the unique artist, who could organic combine detailed photo realistic Flemish landscapes with complex impossible constructions. His artwork were demonstrated at many personal and group exhibitions in Belgium and other countries.

I believe he will be always remembered in many countries, and his works will be great theme of inspiration for many artists around the world.

New artwork by Jos de Mey

Yesterday, I received a pack with artworks by Jos de Mey. Above you can see the latest artwork by him. As usual, there's impossible figure on his artwork. He is my favorite artist in the field of impossible art.

Pythagoras tree

The Pythagoras tree is a plane fractal constructed from squares. It's named after Pythagoras because each triple touching squares encloses right triangle, traditionally used to depict Pythagorean theorem. If triangles of the tree have equal sides, the Pythagorean tree is symmetric, as you can see above, otherwise the tree is asymmetric. The illustration above shows eight iterations of tree construction progress.

Below it's shown asymmetric Pythagoras tree.

The shape of the tree can be used for creation of infinite impossible figure. Some parts of the fractal can be replaced to impossible triangles or squares. Illustrations below show symmetrical and asymmetrical impossible fractal tree.
Flemish artist Jos de Mey created many artworks with Pythagoras tree as main motif. Below you can see his artworks.

Three dimensional effect can be applied to the Pythagoras tree. Illustrations below by Koos Verhoeff shows trees with applied various parameters.

Below you can bronse sculpture of Pythagoras tree which also created by Koos Verhoeff. the sculpture based on computer sketch above right. 

Upd 25.11.2008.

A very nice Pythagoras tree was created by hyperion_00001. Note, that younger leaf generations are located below older ones, which increase convexity of the figure.

Artwork by Jos de Mey

Jos de Mey (1979-1980)
(oil on canvas)
Unidentified stone object (Uso) located in the belgian sahara near knokke

Unlike other artists's artworks there's no birds or other flying objects on the artwork.

Postage card from Jos de Mey

Jos de Mey (August, 2006)
Zig-Zag-Meander-Boog

Today I received a postage card from Belgian artist Jos de Mey. As typical for him there's impossible construction at the drawing and owl sitting on the construction.