SIMONETTA JUNG
Simonetta Jung (Palermo 1917 - Brussels 2005)
Member of the "Movimento Arte Concreta - Gruppo Spaziale"
"I feel that freedom is the greatest and at the same time the most terrible gift that has been bestowed upon the human being"
Simonetta Jung
Member of the "Movimento Arte Concreta - Gruppo Spaziale"
"I feel that freedom is the greatest and at the same time the most terrible gift that has been bestowed upon the human being"
Simonetta Jung
FORME-LUCE (LIGHT FORMS) : 1950-1955
"Forma-Luce no 17" 1953
Collection Arthur Wiesenberger, New York
Collection Arthur Wiesenberger, New York
Milan, 1954. Lucio Fontana visits a Jung exhibition at Galleria Schettini and calls her art "Arte Spaziale - Spatial Art".
Gina Lollobrigida visiting a Jung exhibition in Rome, 1954
Ingrid Bergman visiting the artist's solo exhibition at Galleria Schneider, Rome 1954
Solo Exhibition at Duveen-Graham Gallery, Madison Avenue, New York, 1955
"Futurist Composition" 1958, oil on canvas, 55 x 70 cm
Exhibited and sold at Sotheby's London "Women artists", march 2022
Exhibited and sold at Sotheby's London "Women artists", march 2022
IDEA MATERIA & TENSIONI FORMATIVE : 1958-1972
Abstract Expressionism
"Mon évolution artistique est caractérisée par 2 phases qui se suivent comme le jour suit l'aube. Selon Platon le monde des idées précède celui de la Création terrestre. Mes Forme-Luce et mes T. F. représentent les moments avant et après la Création".
Milano, 1961 with the painting "Idea Materia no 19 - The Beginning" ordered by President and Mrs JF Kennedy for the White House
"Idea materia" 1961, oil on canvas, 90 x 150 cm (Sold)
Private collection, Switzerland
Private collection, Switzerland
"Tensione Formativa" 1966, oil on canvas, 60 x 90 cm (Sold)
Illustration in "S. Jung" by Vittorio Del Gaizo, Editalia-Roma, 1968
Exhibited at Galerie Veranneman Brussels, 1970
Illustration in "S. Jung" by Vittorio Del Gaizo, Editalia-Roma, 1968
Exhibited at Galerie Veranneman Brussels, 1970
One can well speak of lava pouring down the mountainside in describing a texture thick and dense and yet so fluid,
all waves and streamlets, imbued with an energy that tends to go beyond the edges of the canvas. Vittorio del Gaizo
all waves and streamlets, imbued with an energy that tends to go beyond the edges of the canvas. Vittorio del Gaizo
"Tensione Formativa" 1968, oil on canvas (Sold)
"Tensione Formativa" 1969, oil on canvas (Sold)
Exhibition at Galerie Veranneman, Brussels 1970
The artist and Maurits Naessens, President of Banque de Paris & des Pays-Bas Belgium
The artist and Maurits Naessens, President of Banque de Paris & des Pays-Bas Belgium
HOMO NOVUS : 1972-1979
"At every great turning point in history, a "new man" has appeared featuring certain special
characteristics which are the result of the changes occured". Simonetta Jung
"Homo Novus no 14" 1974, acrylic on canvas, 112 x 80 cm
Available, call 02 539.23.09 or mail [email protected]
Available, call 02 539.23.09 or mail [email protected]
"Homo Novus no 15" 1974, acrylic on canvas, 75 x 110 cm
Exhibited at Galleria Nuovo Sagittario, Milan 1976 & Unesco house Paris, 1984
Available, call 02 539.23.09 or mail [email protected]
Exhibited at Galleria Nuovo Sagittario, Milan 1976 & Unesco house Paris, 1984
Available, call 02 539.23.09 or mail [email protected]
"Homo Novus no 16" 1974, acrylic on canvas, 75 x 110 cm
Exhibited at Galleria Nuovo Sagittario Milano, 1976
Available
Exhibited at Galleria Nuovo Sagittario Milano, 1976
Available
"Homo Novus 20" 1974, acrylic on canvas, 80 x 100 cm
Available
Available
"Homo Novus no 57" 1976, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 60 cm
Available
Available
"Homo Novus" 1976, Acrylic on canvas (Sold)
"Homo Novus no 61" 1976, acrylic on canvas, 70 x 80 cm
Available
Available
"Homo Novus no 77" 1977, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 107 cm
Available
Available
Philippe Roberts-Jones, the artist & Serge Goyens de Heusch at Galerie Armorial Brussels, 1979
ELOUNTHA : 1979-1982
Jung paints this cycle on the back of her canvases
"Elountha no 12" 1980, mixed media on canvas (sold)
Private collection, Switzerland
Private collection, Switzerland
"Elountha no 20" 1980, mixed media on canvas, 108 x 90 cm
Exhibited at the Unesco house in Paris, 1984
Available
Exhibited at the Unesco house in Paris, 1984
Available
"Elountha no 21" 1980, mixed media on canvas, 152 x 118 cm
The Elountha (a village in Crete) series are painted on the back of each canvas
Available
The Elountha (a village in Crete) series are painted on the back of each canvas
Available
"Elountha 25" 1980, mixed media on canvas, 72 x 92 cm
Available
Available
ANTHROPOSCOPY : 1982-1984
"This cycle of paintings reflects at the same time a physical and psychological exploration of mankind"
"Anthroposcopy" 1983, mixed media on canvas, 52 x 72 cm
Exhibited at the Unesco house in Paris, 1984
Available
Exhibited at the Unesco house in Paris, 1984
Available
Opening of the S. Jung exhibition at Group 2 Gallery in 1996 under the patronage of italian Ambassador Francesco Corrias
Jeannine Lenaerts, Brussels Region Minister President Charles Picqué & Simonetta Jung at Group 2 Gallery, 1996
Simonetta Jung was born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1917. Her father came from Trieste and her mother, Jeannette Duquesne, was a British subject and a member of an old french family descending from the Marquis Duquesne, Admiral of the french fleet of Louis XIV. The family had gone into exile in England during the reign of Napoleon III. During her studies her favorite subjects were Art History, Philosophy and, above all, Science. Later she took a particular interest in the memoirs of Einstein, who foresaw the possibility that, through the intuition of artists, abstract art would be able to express complex and hard to perceive interstellary relations. With her so called "Forme-Luce" (1949-1956) paintings she held her first personal exhibition in 1954 in Milano, where she met Lucio Fontana, who called her paintings “spatial art”. She became a member of the Movimento Arte Concreta – Gruppo Spaziale. In 1955 she held solo exhibitions in Florence, Venice, Rome and in the famous Duveen-Graham Gallery in Madison Ave, New York. Her work entered into important american collections and museums. Jung creates a second cycle, called "Tensioni Formative" (1958-1971), closely related to abstract expressionism and Cobra. The artist states that the “Forme-Luce” and “Tensioni Formative” series represent the moments “before” and “after” the creation of earth respectively, hereby referring to the theories of Plato. In 1961 Jung paints "Idea Materia no 19 - The Beginning" for the White House after the election of JFK. After moving to San Francisco, the artist starts a new cycle of works entitled "Homo Novus" (1972-1979), symbolizing the human being turning into a robot. By the end of the seventies, she again altered her style, starting the "Elountha” series inspired by the fishing village in Eastern Crete. Although her work has been crystallized in various distinct periods, they are in fact organically linked by a slow natural evolution. Works of Simonetta Jung are found in European and American private collections and museums : Columbia University, NY, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, Stanford University Museum, CA, Brandeis University Museum, MA, The White House, Washington D.C., Nelson-Atkins Gallery of Art, Kansas City, Notre Dame Museum of Art, Southbend (Indiana), Providence College, Massachusets, New Museum, Tel-Aviv etc...
A fine book about Simonetta Jung by art historian Serge Goyens de Heusch was published in 1981.
Main solo exhibitions at Galleria Schettini, Milano, Galleria del Cavallino, Venice and at Galleria Schneider, Roma (1954), Duveen-Graham Gallery, New York (1955), Galerie Veranneman Brussels (1970), Wiles Gallery, San Francisco (1971), Galleria Nuovo Sagittario, Milano (1976), Galerie Armorial (Serge Goyens de Heusch) Brussels (1979), Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas Antwerp (1980), Unesco House Paris (1984), Group 2 Gallery Brussels (1996).
Early years and the making of a spatially concrete abstract painter
Simonetta Jung was born in Palermo in 1917 and died in Brussels in 2005. She developed her artistic practice at the intersection of art, philosophy and science, informed by her studies in art history and physics. In her notes, she refers to Plato and to Einstein’s theories, guided by the idea that abstract art can express invisible relationships within space and the cosmos. This intellectual foundation explains the coherent logic running through her oeuvre, from the first light studies to her later cycles devoted to the human figure and the landscape.
In the early 1950s, Jung began her first major cycle, “Forme-Luce” (Form-Light), in which light is not a theme but an organising principle that generates form. In 1954 she met Lucio Fontana in Milan, who described her work as “Arte Spaziale” and positioned her within the discourse of Spazialismo and Italian Concrete Art. As a member of the Movimento Arte Concreta, she became part of a network where experimental clarity, spatial sensitivity and material intelligence were central values.
Jung worked with great independence. She understood the painting as a conceptual space where ideas and matter encounter each other. This approach explains the organic coherence between her cycles, from “Forme-Luce” to “Tensioni Formative”, and later to “Homo Novus”, “Elountha”, “Anthroposcopies” and “Onto-Rythmes”. Each series grows naturally out of the previous one, using different means while maintaining the same essential question: how does space become visible.
In the early 1950s, Jung began her first major cycle, “Forme-Luce” (Form-Light), in which light is not a theme but an organising principle that generates form. In 1954 she met Lucio Fontana in Milan, who described her work as “Arte Spaziale” and positioned her within the discourse of Spazialismo and Italian Concrete Art. As a member of the Movimento Arte Concreta, she became part of a network where experimental clarity, spatial sensitivity and material intelligence were central values.
Jung worked with great independence. She understood the painting as a conceptual space where ideas and matter encounter each other. This approach explains the organic coherence between her cycles, from “Forme-Luce” to “Tensioni Formative”, and later to “Homo Novus”, “Elountha”, “Anthroposcopies” and “Onto-Rythmes”. Each series grows naturally out of the previous one, using different means while maintaining the same essential question: how does space become visible.
Light as structure, matter as language
In “Forme-Luce” (1950-1955), Jung constructs the canvas as a field of luminous trajectories. Transparent layers, sharp incisions and rhythmic transitions make light the structural building block of the image. Form becomes trajectory rather than contour. Colour conveys intensity and timing rather than anecdote. The result is a group of clear, vibrating compositions in which the viewer’s gaze is guided by forces of light that attract and repel each other.
With “Tensioni Formative” (1958-1972), tension becomes palpable. Thickness, impasto and coagulation acquire expressive meaning. Vittorio Del Gaizo described her paint as lava, dense yet fluid, charged with an energy that seems to push beyond the edges of the canvas. The key work “Idea Materia No. 19 – The Beginning” (1961), a commission from the Kennedys for the White House, encapsulates this dynamic, linking idea to matter and origin to formation.
Technically, Jung moves between oil and mixed media. Matter is never decorative. It articulates thought, just as light does in “Forme-Luce.” This creates a continuous axis between immaterial organisation and tangible surface. Brushes, spatulas and incisions leave traces that make the process readable and transform the surface into an active carrier of meaning.
With “Tensioni Formative” (1958-1972), tension becomes palpable. Thickness, impasto and coagulation acquire expressive meaning. Vittorio Del Gaizo described her paint as lava, dense yet fluid, charged with an energy that seems to push beyond the edges of the canvas. The key work “Idea Materia No. 19 – The Beginning” (1961), a commission from the Kennedys for the White House, encapsulates this dynamic, linking idea to matter and origin to formation.
Technically, Jung moves between oil and mixed media. Matter is never decorative. It articulates thought, just as light does in “Forme-Luce.” This creates a continuous axis between immaterial organisation and tangible surface. Brushes, spatulas and incisions leave traces that make the process readable and transform the surface into an active carrier of meaning.
Themes and series: Forme-Luce, Tensioni Formative, Homo Novus
Jung described her development as two phases following each other like day follows dawn. According to her, “Forme-Luce” and “Tensioni Formative” represent the moments before and after the creation of the universe. The first series emphasises emanation and expansion. The second makes energy visible as pressure, turbulence and aggregation. The viewer does not read a narrative but a physics of the image.
In the “Homo Novus” cycle (1972-1979), she examines the transformation of the human being in a technological age. Silhouettes become stylised and frontal, colour refines into luminous chords and rhythms pulse across the canvas. These paintings function as diagrams of a new concept of humanity in which the organic and the mechanical intersect. The human figure appears as vector rather than portrait.
With “Elountha” (1979-1982), named after a fishing harbour in Crete, Jung reverses her canvases and paints on the reverse. The inversion is conceptual as well as technical. Horizon, water and stone dissolve into rhythms and textures, as if the landscape were rendered through its underlying forces.
The “Anthroposcopies” series (1982-1984) links the physical and the psychological. The canvas becomes a viewing surface and a scanning image. Layers accumulate like sediment. The human being emerges not as likeness but as a structure of traces and tensions.
In the “Homo Novus” cycle (1972-1979), she examines the transformation of the human being in a technological age. Silhouettes become stylised and frontal, colour refines into luminous chords and rhythms pulse across the canvas. These paintings function as diagrams of a new concept of humanity in which the organic and the mechanical intersect. The human figure appears as vector rather than portrait.
With “Elountha” (1979-1982), named after a fishing harbour in Crete, Jung reverses her canvases and paints on the reverse. The inversion is conceptual as well as technical. Horizon, water and stone dissolve into rhythms and textures, as if the landscape were rendered through its underlying forces.
The “Anthroposcopies” series (1982-1984) links the physical and the psychological. The canvas becomes a viewing surface and a scanning image. Layers accumulate like sediment. The human being emerges not as likeness but as a structure of traces and tensions.
Exhibitions, networks and collections
Jung was active within international networks centred around Milan and Rome. In 1954, Lucio Fontana visited her exhibition at Galleria Schettini and welcomed her into the Arte Spaziale group. That same year, her solo exhibitions in Rome drew the attention of visitors from the cultural and film worlds, increasing her visibility beyond the traditional art sphere. In 1955, a solo exhibition at the acclaimed Duveen-Graham Gallery in New York brought a major breakthrough. Her works entered American private and institutional collections, giving her career a transatlantic dimension.
Significant exhibitions followed, including at Galerie Veranneman and BP Gallery in Brussels, Galleria Nuovo Sagittario in Milan, the UNESCO House in Paris, the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas in Antwerp and Group 2 Gallery in Brussels. Her works are held in private and public collections in Europe and the United States. A monograph by Serge Goyens de Heusch, published in 1981, documents her development and places her various cycles within their philosophical and art-historical context.
Jung positioned herself freely between Concrete Art, Spatial Art and expressive matter painting. This fluidity explains the overall coherence of her oeuvre, in which light, tension and the human image appear as recurring structural threads, and in which each new chapter grows logically from the preceding one.
Group 2 Gallery keeps Simonetta Jung’s legacy alive through exhibitions, private viewings and collection guidance. Available works, from “Forme-Luce” and “Tensioni Formative” to “Homo Novus”, “Elountha” and “Anthroposcopy”, are carefully documented with provenance and literature. Contact the gallery for current availability, discreet acquisition or sale advice, and tailored selections.
Significant exhibitions followed, including at Galerie Veranneman and BP Gallery in Brussels, Galleria Nuovo Sagittario in Milan, the UNESCO House in Paris, the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas in Antwerp and Group 2 Gallery in Brussels. Her works are held in private and public collections in Europe and the United States. A monograph by Serge Goyens de Heusch, published in 1981, documents her development and places her various cycles within their philosophical and art-historical context.
Jung positioned herself freely between Concrete Art, Spatial Art and expressive matter painting. This fluidity explains the overall coherence of her oeuvre, in which light, tension and the human image appear as recurring structural threads, and in which each new chapter grows logically from the preceding one.
Group 2 Gallery keeps Simonetta Jung’s legacy alive through exhibitions, private viewings and collection guidance. Available works, from “Forme-Luce” and “Tensioni Formative” to “Homo Novus”, “Elountha” and “Anthroposcopy”, are carefully documented with provenance and literature. Contact the gallery for current availability, discreet acquisition or sale advice, and tailored selections.
