Erik Andriesse
dal 16/5/2003 al 14/9/2003
Segnalato da
16/5/2003
Erik Andriesse
De Pont Museum, Tilburg
Ten years ago the artist Erik Andriesse (Bussum 1957 - Amsterdam 1993) died at a young age. Now Erik Andriesse is being remembered with an exhibition at the De Pont. Andriesse always regarded nature as his greatest teacher, and his tribute to it is displayed in the vitality of his work.
Retrospective exhibition of work on paper
Ten years ago the artist Erik Andriesse (Bussum 1957 - Amsterdam 1993) died at a
young age. Now Erik Andriesse is being remembered with an exhibition at the De
Pont.
His talent noticed at an early stage, Erik Andriesse has his first gallery
exhibition by the age of fifteen.
During and after his time at Ateliers '63 (1975-1977) Andriesse spends a brief
period creating abstract compositions involving painted wooden boards and
fruit-juice prints on paper. Despite their abstract quality, these compositions
soon reveal the forms of his favorite subjects - flowers and animals.
Andriesse always regarded nature as his greatest teacher, and his tribute to it
is displayed in the vitality of his work. With him the stages of blossoming and
decay are no 'vanitas' symbols; even the skulls and sketelons are not macabre
but sooner attest to a cheerful relativizing of our mortality.
Sunflowers and amarylisses are among his favorite subjects, but lilies, orchids,
poppies and magnolias are also rendered in their full splendor. Paint that
spatters and drips across the canvas provides the image with considerable
dynamics. Andriesse is a fervent colorist, and the flowers lend themselves
outstandingly well to such explosions of color. He seems deliberately to seek
the limits of aesthetic seduction and tasteful refinement. The visual experience
is essential to Erik Andriesse. He is interested in conveying a message or
telling a story to a lesser extent than many other artists of his generation.
Although renewed concern and appreciation for figurative painting during the
1980s create a context for his work, this does not lead to the use of symbolism,
quotes or references as it did with many of the 'new painters' of that time.
While staying on the island of Bonaire, he becomes fascinated with the whimsical
shapes and brilliant colors of marine life in the tropics. This gives rise to
works in which crabs, losters, shells and turtles are depicted. The most
difficult forms and patterns seem to provide the artist with the greatest
challenge to his drawing skills. Even so, exact representation is never an aim
in itself for Andriesse; his interest lies more with the unexpected compositions
that he manages to create with his colorful images. That interest becomes
increasingly evident with the countless works involving skeletons which he
produced during and after a period of drawing and painting at Amsterdam's
Zoölogisch Museum in 1990. At first he meticulously studies the complex skeletal
anatomy of humans and animals, but as soon as he gains an understanding of this
he proceeds to make lively compositions of all these skeletons. The culmination
of this is undoubtedly the immense painting Dode dierentuin from 1990/91, in
which the skeletons of a giraffe, a lion, a crocodile, a monkey and a parrot
make up a bizarre sort of parade together with a number of human skulls.
Andriesse produced hundreds of studies of skulls. As early as 1986, at Museum
Fodor in Amsterdam, he had exhibited a group of twenty-five skull studies, all
of them having a different appearance by way of color, form and composition. It
is as though he wishes to counteract the anonymity of death by giving all of the
skulls individual characteristics and, in doing so, restores to them some degree
of life.
In the image a work on paper
De Pont foundation
Wilhelminapark 1
Tilburg