Gast Michels - Gaston François (Guest) Michels (Echternach,

Edition EA 10/16. Will be shipped with frame, can be collected from the seller's address. Gast Michels grew up in Consdorf in the immediate vicinity of the Luxembourg Mullerthal forest area. While his mother managed the household, his father was a commercial agent. In his spare time, he enjoyed making oil paintings of the Mullerthal. Between 1974 and 1980, Gast Michels studied visual arts at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts Saint Luc in Liège. In 1980, he moved back to Luxembourg, married, and began teaching art at the Luxembourg Summer Academy and the Lycée Nic Biver in Dudelange. At the same time, from 1982 onwards, he gave evening classes at the Lycée Technique des Arts et Métiers in Luxembourg City. That same year, his first son was born, the second in 1984. Michels retired from teaching in 1988 and began his career as a freelance painter, graphic artist, and sculptor. He occasionally worked in other media, such as ceramics and tapestries. The subsequent deaths of his wife and parents between 1996 and 1999 impacted both his personal life and his artistic practice. During the last years of his own life, he lived and worked in Provence.
The signs, which take the form of stylized arrows, wheels, squares, or animal heads, among other things, are fundamental elements in Michels' work from 1987 onwards. Complementing the other abstract elements, the artist executed these figurative signs in a graphic, expressive way. According to Michels, the symbols carry meaning