Art Story

With his expressive touch, Jan De Vliegher breathes new life into Venice's St. Mark's Square. In the "San Marco" series, he transforms this iconic cityscape into a play of light, paint, and atmosphere. What begins as a photograph evolves during the painting process into a layered, sensory experience. Started in 2005 and revisited in 2020 and 2021, the series reflects De Vliegher's enduring fascination with Italy and its visual richness. In the later "San Marco" works, the square is bathed in full daylight: warm tones, loose brushstrokes, and a composition built more on feeling than perspective. Visitors and birds -the square's inseparable pigeons -are constant elements within the painting. Their presence merges with the rhythm of colors and strokes, giving the whole a spontaneous vitality. The grey square takes on color and becomes an experience where figuration dissolves into movement. Venice appears not as a tourist cliché but as an impressionistic memory in paint.