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  • From: 30 april 2016
  • Through: 02 october 2016
  • Location: Kasteel Het Nijenhuis

THE LYRICISM OF THE LANDSCAPE - 100 years of expressionist landscape art in the Netherlands

This summer, Museum de Fundatie is showing an overview exhibition of 100 years of expressionist art in the Netherlands at its location Kasteel Nijenhuis in Heino/Wijhe, under the title ‘The lyricism of the landscape’. The liberation of colour and movement at the start of the 20th century has been a major influence on the development of Dutch art, particularly the landscape genre. This influence can be seen to this very day. On display are paintings by Jan Sluijters, Leo Gestel, Jan Wiegers, Wim Oepts, Eugène Brands, Nicolaas Wijnberg, Pieter Defesche, Ger Lataster, Armando, JCJ Vanderheyden, Leon Adriaans, Jeroen Krabbé, Marc Mulders, Robert Zandvliet, and many others.

 “The main difference between me and the older generation is that I base my paintings on my inner feelings, thereby arriving at an external form, whilst the older generation painted the external form and tried to add their inner feelings as an encore.”

This is how Jan Sluijters described the difference between impressionism and expressionism over a century ago. According to him, the impressionists worked from the outside inwards, whilst the expressionists did so from the inside outwards. Originating in Paris around 1900, the new trend in bright colours and powerful brushstrokes only really took off in the Netherlands in the decades that followed. With the paintings of the Bergen School and the Groningen artists’ collective De Ploeg, expressionism first reached its peak in the 1920s and 1930s.



Jan Altink, Reitdiepsdijk, 1928, oil on cardboard Jeroen Krabbé, Suriname River 
at Danpaati II, 2006, 
oil on canvas

Immediately after the Second World War, the movement made a spectacular new start with Cobra. Expressionism has been an integral part of the history of Dutch art ever since. ‘Wild painting’ is associated with spontaneity, emotion and freedom, terms that these days are inextricably linked to art. In the 1950s, artists discovered that colour and movement could have a strong spatial effect even without any direct reference to the visible world. Many abstract compositions are not landscapes in the strict sense of the word, but the viewer can still get lost in them. Besides, painting nature had never really disappeared, and at the end of the 1980s the New Wild helped to bring it back to the forefront of modern art.

And now at the start of the 21st century, with its ongoing urban sprawl, the expressionist landscape is catering to our need for space and freedom perhaps more than ever. The relaxed presentation in the living room atmosphere of  Kasteel het Nijenhuis makes ‘The lyricism of the landscape’ both a pleasant and surprising tour through the 100 years of expressionist landscape art in the Netherlands.


  • From: 30 Apr 2016
  • Through: 02 Oct 2016
  • Location: Kasteel Het Nijenhuis

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