Genres en abstractions
Collecting art results in more than a mere sum of objects. After a time, unexpected connections and contrasts arise within a col¬lection. As a colorful balance that strikes the eye, the work Pairs by Maria Roosen can be considered a prelude to the Rabo Art Collection’s ‘character sketch’. Both the foundations and the leitmotif of this collection have been brought into focus through the work of significant artists. The underlying principle: it begins with the artist.
In the recent past, Dutch art has been characterized by a minimalist response to the exuberant painting of CoBrA artists during the 1950s. It was the time of the Zero movement: Jan Schoonhoven, Ad Dek¬kers, later Jan Dibbets and Jan van Munster used a formal approach to phenomena such as light, perspective and energy. Working along the lines of this movement are JCJ Vanderheyden and Ger van Elk. They investigate similar phenomena in a more personal way and allude to the experience of the artist (working in the studio) and to art history. A subsequent generation expands upon this in the classical genre of the portrait. Rineke Dijkstra and Sebastian Bremer photograph people and their surroundings. To this Bremer adds a second classical genre by incorporating delicately drawn still lifes in his photographs. Guido Geelen also creates contemporary still lifes, cast in aluminum, terracotta, porcelain or bronze. Cloth is a preferred material for painter Michael Raedecker and the promising Barbara Polderman. While Raedecker is one of today’s most prominent artists, Polderman has just started her career. And a third genre that characterizes contemporary Dutch art is the landscape. Gabor Ösz, for instance, has photographed the sea from various bunkers that he used as ‘camera obscura’ chambers. And with the work of true-blue painter Koen Delaere, which definitely involves landscape-like elements, we return to abstraction.
