Rabobank Kunstcollectie

Painting in an innovative way when people want traditional. Declaring the art of painting dead just when it's coming back into fashion. Exhibiting profound social engagement with innumerable models, manifestos and drawings. Only to then return to painting. This was the artistic path of Constant A. Nieuwenhuys (Constant). Against the grain, playful, but with conviction.

Like the other founders of the CoBrA* movement, after the Second World War Constant sought new freedom in the arts. But unlike his fellows, he did embrace technological progress. His forward-looking perspective led him to set aside the art of painting for his New Babylon project.

From 1953 until the nineteen sixties, he devoted his artistic expression to a new world, a vision of the future of the city and of man, who must above all never lose his lust for living in a world changing at an ever-increasing pace. New Babylon inspired many later architects and urban planners, and was exhibited extensively at the documenta in Kassel in 2002. But in the early nineteen seventies, Constant returned to the canvas, spending his days in his workshop expressing his fancy in watercolours, oils and etchings. Everything from wars and other worldwide crises to the power of music to those near and dear to him, including the small dog that inseparably accompanied him in his later years. Constant died at the age of 85.

* CoBrA was an art movement founded in 1948 by the artists Constant, Corneille, Christian Dotremont and Asger Jorn. This 'young guard' found inspiration in untraditional sources like non-Western art and children's drawings.