Vandenberg was credited with reviving painting in Flanders after the predominance of conceptual art in the 1970s. A visit to New York in 1978 and exposure to the work of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko influenced him greatly.

There was always a darkness about him and his work. "I think only despair can bring us to act, or rather to react against our fate as humans who, against our will find ourselves submerged in a life that is no more than an ante-room," he once said. On another occasion: "Painting is a rehearsal for death."

"Philippe Vandenberg seemed predestined to come to a tragic end," commented Jan Hoet, formerly the director of the modern art museum SMAK in Ghent, whose collection includes some of Vandenberg's work. Hoet famously criticised Vandenberg's work in the 1980s, a blow the painter found hard to get over, even though Hoet publicly recanted a decade later.

Born in 1952 in Ghent, Vandenberg initially studied art history before turning to painting at the Fine Arts Academy in Ghent. In his thirties, he achieved international recognition with exhibitions in Amsterdam, Washington, Madrid and Vienna. The Guggenheim in New York acquired a Vandenberg in 1986, and his work is also to be seen in the Fine Arts Museum (MSK) in Ghent and the Contemporary Art Museum (MUKHA) in Antwerp.

"He created passionate, literary paintings that express inner torment in styles reflecting his admiration for artists ranging from James Ensor to Philip Guston," Flanders Today art critic Sarah McFadden said.