Een zucht naar meer lucht - Campaign Identity and Exhibition Design

Plein-air painting (from the French en plein air, meaning “in the open air”) is a movement within landscape painting in which artists work directly on location, immersed in nature, rather than in the studio. Emerging in the early nineteenth century, the movement is most commonly associated with male artists. Yet the work of their female counterparts was every bit as remarkable.

The association *Vrienden van de School van Tervuren* therefore decided it was time to dedicate an exhibition exclusively to female plein-air painters. Our task was to develop both the exhibition campaign and its scenography.

The proposed exhibition title, *Paintresses and Plein-Airism*, quickly felt outdated. Since design is about more than form alone, we set out to find a new title and visual identity that better reflected the exhibition’s premise.

Our inspiration came from a quote by Louise Héger, one of the featured artists: “J’ai soif d’un grand ciel” (“I thirst for a vast sky”). Reinterpreted in Dutch, this became “Een zucht naar meer lucht”. Much like its French counterpart, the phrase evokes both a sense of freedom and the experience of being outdoors. Combined with a detail of the sky from one of the exhibited paintings, the title became the foundation for a compelling and inviting campaign image. From there, the exhibition poster and scenographic concept followed naturally, creating a cohesive visual narrative throughout the exhibition.