Will be sent by registered mail. Antoon (Jozef Antoon Gastmans) was born on 21 January 1943 on the Berg in Meerhout, Belgium. The underscores of the ‘os’ refers to the two eyes he viewed the world with. He busied himself creatively and with a special drawing talent since he was young. Antoon developed his talent at the Vespertekenscholen of Meerhout and Tongerlo, and then followed lessons at the Academie van Mol in monumental art and ceramics. Besides that, he followed private lessons with Victor Braems, a painter from Beringen. During his time in the army, Antoon studied monumental art at the ‘Volkshogeschool’ in Cologne. He has been exposing his work since 1983, from Meerhout to the USA and Japan. He became internationally renowned and received quite some prizes. When he was 18 in 1961, he represented the Belgian contemporary art in Nancy, France, where he received second prize for painting. Many other rewards would follow. Remarkable is the recognition he got in the USA. He was asked to represent modern European art in New York. There he received in 1983 ‘Le diplome de medaille d'argent’. Antoon worked 25 years to remove the barrier between audience and artist. He opened his studio in the Schoolstraat in Meerhout in 1983, where he kept his studio open for a quarter of a century. Visitors were able to get acquainted with his place of work, get to know the world of the artist and to admire his works. For health reasons he closed these open studios in 2009 with huge public interest. Antoon passed away on 12 December 2011. Source: Artway.eu.