Mark Verstockt

Marc Verstockt or Mark Verstockt was a sculptor, graphic artist and painter. He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, together with Dan Van Severen. They became proponents of constructivism. He immersed himself in abstraction and the study of geometric shapes. Verstockt produced sculptures, the most famous of which is the monumental sculpture ‘Signaal’ in Sint-Niklaas. He experimented with video and the art of printing books. In 1971 he published ‘This is not a book’. Verstockt earned a reputation as a theoretician with the publication, in 1982, of ‘De Genesis van de vorm, van chaos tot geometrie’ (the Genesis of form, from Chaos to Geometry), an in-depth study of three fundamental shapes: the circle, the square and the triangle.

Verstockt is most known in Belgium due to his monumental works in public space. For example The signal is a visual recognizable image. Other typical examples are the sculpture Caduceus, which he made for the Flemish Parliament, and the floor drawing which he made in the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels.