Tersas Toon

Toon Tersas (pseudonym of KEERSMAEKERS, Antoon) was a Belgian artist, born in Weert in 1924 and died in Dessel in 1995. He was a graphic artist, draftsman and author. He was largely self-taught. He was a student of P. Nouwen for a while. He also followed model painting for a few months in Paris at a free academy. He debuted with metal sculptures, cold abstract canvases, figurative watercolors and pastels, monotypes and drawings. In the 1960s and 1970s he turned to publications from the international mass media. He incorporated texts and images from current political events in his drawings, gouaches, screen prints and book objects. Subsequently, he focused more and more on graphics. He can be regarded as a "translator" who converted the chaotic impressions of the media into a private language. From the press: “On paper, T.T. himself as a maker of gestures, of graphics in the double sense of the word: writing and painting”, and “His pictorial or calligraphic oil paintings of text material force the hurried reader to pause for a moment in the consumption of the news reports. Tersas thus points to the problem of the speed with which today's people absorb information, digest it and spew it out again.” After his death, the core of his estate came into the possession of the MuKHA in Antwerp. Toon Tersas is mentioned in BAS II and Two centuries of signatures of Belgian artists. (Piron)