Robert Zandvliet (1970)
Robert Zandvliet is a true devotee of the art of painting, working in the three classic genres of still life, landscape, and (since 2008) the portrait. He is also well-schooled in the effects of light and is a master of working with the ancient technique of tempera painting, which, under Zandvliet's broad brush, reveals every stroke with stunning clarity. The paint is so transparent that no swath, once painted, yields to any other.
Long fascinated by the act of observation, in his early works Zandvliet painted television and cinema screens or car mirrors as an open surface, preferring to explore what he saw almost indirectly, at a distance, through these windows on the world. Later he traded in this stylised realism for harmonic but abstract landscapes. Sometimes lacking even horizon or specific objects, Zandvliet's landscapes give colour play full reign in a manner reminiscent of the later work of Willem de Kooning. Zandvliet is an insatiable observer and ardent believer in the specific quality of Dutch light, which he experiences as 'richer, creamier' than the light in other locales like Italy where, he says, the light is harder and dryer, pushing the contours of objects much more into the foreground.*
For Zandvliet, the art of painting is the most important thing, whether he is painting a landscape or a portrait. 'My brushstroke is my grammar, my language, the fundamental building block of my means of expression,' says Zandvliet.** Zandvliet lives and works in Rotterdam.
* Zandvliet, in the documentary Hollandslicht (2003), Pieter-Rim and Maarten de Kroon
** Zandvliet, in an announcement for his exhibition Fries in Museum Belvedère (30 august through 30 November 2008), www.galeries.nl
