Anne Heyvaert ///
René Heyvaert and his mail art. In an everyday conception of art and life

For me it was a source of great emotion, almost twenty-five years after the death of my father, René Heyvaert (1929-1984), to receive his first major monograph[1] published in Belgium, which presents us with an intense and radical work in which everyday life and creation are deeply connected. Thanks to this book and to other events around him[2] I rediscovered a father whom I had known very little about[3]; although he wrote to us regularly and sent us cards he had made himself without an envelope and not only with texts. These cards – objects, first examples for us of his artistic activity – surprised us, sometimes we liked them and sometimes they annoyed us, although we kept them out of suspicion; they still bring out within us very deep, epidermic feelings.