International Art News

From 8 June until 29 September, 2013 – Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen – Submarine Wharf
This summer Klaas Kloosterboer, Chris Martin and Jim Shaw will transform the Submarine Wharf into a gigantic art studio.
In the months leading up to the opening, the artists will be busy at work in the wharf, creating the exhibition on site. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen wishes to demonstrate the resilience and energy of the art of painting with a true ‘battle of the Titans’ between the three artists:

The Amsterdam-based artist Klaas Kloosterboer can be seen as an ‘inventor’. He experiments constantly, altering the form and appearance of his paintings. The exhibition will include works from the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, augmented with loans and new works. Chris Martin lives and works in New York and is the ‘savage painter’: he uses his energy to make each painting an explosion of colour and power. In ‘XXXL Painting’ he will exhibit thirty existing paintings, and in the weeks leading up to the opening he will work on a new painting measuring 13 x 10 metres. Jim Shaw, the ‘storyteller’ from Los Angeles completes the trio. He paints and draws in a figurative, sometimes cartoon-like style on old film sets. In the Submarine Wharf he will present these ‘backdrop’ paintings, some measuring 4 x 15 metres.

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

From 29 September 2012 to 25 April 2013
During its temporary stay in the Hermitage Amsterdam, the Van Gogh Museum will present works by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) from its permanent collection in a completely new way. In this display of some 75 paintings, selected letters, objects and works on paper, visitors will follow Vincent van Gogh on a personal quest into the heart of his artistic identity. The themes that the artist himself identified as central to his development will form the basis of the presentation Vincent: The Van Gogh Museum in the Hermitage Amsterdam.

During this seven-month renovation, most of the works by Van Gogh in the museum’s collection will be on display at the Hermitage Amsterdam. Many major paintings will be included, such as Sunflowers, The bedroom, Almond blossom, The potato eaters and The yellow house, in surprising combinations of early and late works. Van Gogh’s most famous and best loved paintings will be shown side by side with lesser known works in closely integrated thematic pairings.

Hermitage Amsterdam

Until the 13th of January 2013 -  Hermitage Amsterdam
The Hermitage Amsterdam present Impressionism: Sensation & Inspiration: the world-famous Impressionist paintings from the vast collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, are presented in their artistic context.

Masterpieces by pioneers like Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Camille Pissarro are accompanied by the work of other influential French painters from the second half of the nineteenth century, such as Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Léon Gérôme. The exhibition focus on contrasts between artistic movements. For instance, visitors can see and experience the sensational quality of Impressionism, the movement that heralded a new age.

All the paintings, drawings, and sculptures come from the collection of the St. Petersburg Hermitage. Seldom has such a rich survey of this period been on display in the Netherlands.

 Hermitage Amsterdam

From May 25 to September 3, 2012 – National Gallery of Canada
Van Gogh: Up Close is the first major exhibition in Canada in over 25 years of works by this famous Dutch artist. It brings together more than 40 of Van Gogh’s paintings from private and public collections around the world, as well as a selection of Japanese woodblock prints, nineteenth-century photographs, and works on paper from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

This exhibition explores Van Gogh’s love for nature and his gift for representing the world around him, from landscapes down to the smallest blade of grass.

For example, the show includes Iris (1889), from the National Gallery of Canada’s collection, as well as paintings that depict another corner of the garden where Van Gogh painted Iris, but from a wider angle. Van Gogh: Up Close will demonstrate how these paintings became the most radical and innovative in the artist’s body of work.

In early 1886 Van Gogh arrived in Paris from the Netherlands and came face to face with a revolutionary new way of painting. For the first time he was exposed to the art of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists, which compelled him to revise his painting in both content and style. He quickly abandoned the sombre hues of his earlier Dutch works in favour of a brighter palette and modernized brushstroke, beginning with a series of flower still lifes painted in a typical 19th century Western style. But Van Gogh swiftly departed from this tradition and focused increasingly on the subject itself, eliminating the surrounding space.

At the same time, Van Gogh developed a keen interest in Japanese woodblock prints, which he admired for their aesthetic qualities. Like the Impressionist painters who had discovered these prints earlier, Van Gogh became fascinated with Japanese art. This led him to experiment with unusual visual angles, decorative use of colour, cropping and flattening of his compositions.

Often remembered for his battles with mental illness and suicide in July 1890, Van Gogh was first and foremost an ambitious, well-read and sophisticated thinker whose work was informed and deliberate.

Born in 1853, he was fluent in English, French and Dutch, and he had a great love for the written word. Throughout his life he read a vast amount of literature that stretched from the Bible to French Naturalist writings. Vincent Van Gogh also had a strong understanding of art history that extended from Old Master paintings right up to the emergence of photography.

National Gallery of Canada Hours

From Saturday, March 31st, 2012 to Saturday, May 12th, 2012 – Gerhard Hofland – Gallery
Gerhard Hofland proudly presents its first solo exhibition of new paintings by Matijs van de Kerkhof (Nuenen,1977).

After studying at the art academy in Den Bosch for several years, Matijs van de Kerkhof has gone on to become a self-taught artist with a compelling and highly original oeuvre.

Van de Kerkhof generally paints group scenes that are dimly lit and infused with a sense of quiet menace. The protagonists, claustrophobic spaces, landscapes, houses and other props are rendered in seemingly casual, intuitive brushstrokes. Black, dark brown or dark blue are the dominant shades in his palette, and from which Van de Kerkhof conjures up scenes in warm hues. Shadows throw large darker areas over the painting. And light receives a similar treatment – mostly radiating from lamps or other unnatural sources, it slices through the dark spaces in sections or brighter bands.

Van der Kerkhof’s props and characters are culled from old snapshots found in family albums and re-envisioned in desolate, often disturbing, scenes.
Van de Kerkhof presents us with images in which the staged reality of Edward Hopper meets the psychotic nightmare world of Francis Bacon.
Matijs van de Kerkhof lives and works in Eindhoven and frequently exhibits his work throughout the region. His work was recently added to the portfolio of Henk Pijnenburg of Art Pijnenburg.

Gallery Hours

25 February to 20 May 2012 – Kunsthal Rotterdam
The Kunsthal Rotterdam proudly presents the exhibition Closer to You, illustrating the fascination that Dutch painter Jasper Krabbé has for his wife and muse Floor. The exhibition, which includes over 200 portraits, illustrates Krabbé’s desire to get closer to her. He spent a year and a half creating images portraying ever different aspects of this one woman. The selected works illustrate a wide diversity of options for creating contemporary portraits as well as a variety of techniques on paper. Krabbé particular likes to work on ‘used’ backgrounds such as pieces of cardboard, envelopes and packaging materials. All his works are presented in frames that he has found and many of which are antique. The portraits, presented as an installation across two floors of the Kunsthal’s Design Gallery, are an ode to love.

The series of portraits range from watercolours to detailed studies in ink, and from detailed portraits to simple line drawings. The works contain countless references to portrait art but also to street art and film posters. Furthermore, the frailty and transience of life form a recurrent theme in Krabbé’s work. In close proximity to his muse, he has recorded moments in time that would otherwise have been lost. In the portraits, we see Floor taking a nap in the car, staring into space or standing in a shop. On viewing these works, one feels almost a part of these daily, sometimes profound moments.

Jasper Krabbé (1970) lives and works in Amsterdam. He graduated with honours from the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and from the Cooper Union in New York. Krabbé began his artistic career as a graffiti artist and was a member of the Amsterdamse Collectief USA (United Street Artists). His work often reflects memories of places, events and individuals. Krabbé has had various exhibitions in countries including Sweden, Brazil, Italy and the United States of America. His work is included in collections belonging to De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and others.

Museum Hours