Jef Geys was born in 1934, Leopoldsburg, Belgium and passed away in 2018 in Genk, Belgium. He is considered one of the most important Belgian artists of his generation. From the time he entered the art world in the early 1960s, Geys affirmed a radical independent position and developed an unprecedented approach to collective creativity, setting his work against institutional authority. Geys conceived his oeuvre as an evolving project with a conceptual attitude, education and form experiment as main ingredients. In the 1960s he began mapping out possible types of learning, putting to good use his position as a professor of art in Balen, which he held until 1989.

Jef Geys represented Belgium at the 2009 Venice Biennale, and took part in important exhibitions and biennales such as Chambres d’Amis (Gent, 1986), São Paulo Biennale (São Paulo, 1991), Skulptur Projekte Münster (Münster, 1997), and Documenta 11 (Kassel, 2002). In 1993 Geys presented his exhibition project What Are We Having for Dinner Tonight? at Witte de With, Rotterdam.