Marthe Wéry

Born in 1930 in Brussels, Marthe Wéry was a pioneering figure in minimalist and conceptual abstraction. Trained at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, she developed a rigorous approach to painting, emphasizing materiality, process, and spatial experience.

Wéry’s early work was rooted in geometric abstraction, but by the 1970s, she began stripping her compositions of rigid structure, engaging instead with seriality, repetition, and nuanced explorations of color and surface. Her methodical layering of pigment and her sensitivity to the physicality of paint created works that blur the boundary between painting and object. Rejecting conventional composition, she often presented works in sequences or grids, allowing light and viewer perception to activate the pieces.

A key figure in the European minimalist movement, Wéry gained international recognition through her participation in major exhibitions, including documenta 6 in Kassel (1977) and the Venice Biennale (1982), where she represented Belgium.