Hans Broek (1965)
How can you paint a landscape that is immediately recognisable and yet leaves everything to the imagination? It may seem a paradox, but Hans Broek succeeds in doing just that time and time again. In the nineteen nineties, he painted the expanse of a landscape or the wideness of an evening sky with such breathtaking clarity that one barely notices the absence of people; Broek paints only the traces they have left behind.
The twinkling lights of Los Angeles bathed in night, or a villa along a dark forest edge; these are the subjects that enthralled Broek after he moved to the American West Coast in 1995. The impressions he gathered during long car trips in the country became the subjects he rendered in large-scale format. Broek's work portrays tranquillity, form and light in a way that only distantly alludes to the traditional Dutch landscapes, instead seeming more closely linked to the American tradition of painters like Edward Hopper. Now living in New York, Broek's work has expanded to include small portraits of actresses, like Nora Brady and Isabella Rossellini. Perhaps not coincidentally, his style seems to be hearkening back to the time in which these women were very much in the public eye.
The twinkling lights of Los Angeles bathed in night, or a villa along a dark forest edge; these are the subjects that enthralled Broek after he moved to the American West Coast in 1995. The impressions he gathered during long car trips in the country became the subjects he rendered in large-scale format. Broek's work portrays tranquillity, form and light in a way that only distantly alludes to the traditional Dutch landscapes, instead seeming more closely linked to the American tradition of painters like Edward Hopper. Now living in New York, Broek's work has expanded to include small portraits of actresses, like Nora Brady and Isabella Rossellini. Perhaps not coincidentally, his style seems to be hearkening back to the time in which these women were very much in the public eye.
