Retrospective. Influenced in his early works during the 1920s by Cubism and Symbolism, the artist was nevertheless soon to develop his own particular Expressionist style. His drawings, paintings and large-scale wooden sculptures from the early 1930s as well as the figures, the couples and individual portraits Chabot created, represented his view of humankind.
The Sprengel Museum Hannover, in cooperation with the Chabot Museum Rotterdam, will be showing the first retrospective ever in Germany of works by the Dutch Expressionist, Henk Chabot (1894-1949). This exhibition follows the showing of ‘Otto Gleichmann (1887-1963)’ at the Chabot Museum Rotterdam (27 November 2007–2 March 2008), which presented a compact review of the Hanover artist, Otto Gleichmann’s, oeuvre.
Henk Chabot, influenced in his early works during the 1920s by Cubism and Symbolism, was nevertheless soon to develop his own particular Expressionist style. His drawings, paintings and large-scale wooden sculptures from the early 1930s as well as the figures, the couples and individual portraits Chabot created, represented his view of humankind. The people he had contact with in the Dutch province of Zeeland, which in itself was shaped by the sea and was his home from time to time, are recognisable in his knobbly, angular figures. From the early 1930s, however, he concentrated on the agricultural landscape as well as seascape around him, focusing on his expressive vocabulary.
His landscapes, following the German occupation of Holland, also took on a political face. His work in the early 1940s portrayed the misery and suffering of people caught in the war and this was to come more and more to the fore. Chabot refused to join the ‘Kulturkammer’ (chamber for culture) which was introduced by the German National Socialists. After the country was freed from the National Socialists, the expression in the faces of his injured prisoners and refugees became less sceptical towards the future. His works from the late 1940s, accentuated by self-portraits and moreover glowing landscapes, will round off the exhibition.
The exhibition presents all periods and genres from the artist’s work - from paintings to sculptures to works on paper and drawings.
Image: Henk Chabot, Selfportrait with cigarette, 1945. Oil on canvas 81 x 68 cm. Collection Chabot Museum Rotterdam
Press contact:
Isabelle Schwarz presse-mmd@hannover-stadt.de
Sprengel Museum
Kurt Schwitters Platz - Hannover
Opening hours: Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays: 10 am – 8 pm, Wednesday – Sunday: 10 am – 6 pm
Admission: Euro 7, reductions Euro 4. Free entrance on friday