Untitled, 2020
Egg tempera on linen
24 3/4 x 28 3/8 inches (63 x 72 cm)
(RZ2020/02)
Robert Zandvliet, Bridgehampton, New York
We are pleased to present Robert Zandvliet - Paintings and Works on Paper: 1999-2020. Surveying the Dutch artist's practice and evolution over the past two decades, the online exhibition features early works and newly available paintings created within the last year. Please click "Inquire" below the artwork details to contact the gallery for more information.
Robert Zandvliet was born in Terband, Netherlands in 1970 and he lives and works in Haarlem, Netherlands. Hovering on the cusp of abstraction and representation, Zandvliet's work primarily uses landscape as a conceptual frame of reference. Recognizable representations have been replaced by gestural plays of line, color, and surface that shift and merge foreground and background, reorienting the viewer’s perception of depth and surface.
Zandvliet has had numerous solo museum exhibitions including at the Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands (2019), De Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands (1997, 2005, 2014); the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (2012); Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2005); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2001), the Neues Kunstmuseum, Luzern, Switzerland (2001); and the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Strasbourg, France (2000).
Grouping of 9 egg tempera and oil on paper works, 9 1/2 x 12 1/4 inches (24 x 31 cm), each
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“There is something magical about painting.
The transformed image on the canvas is always both an illusion and an abstraction of reality."
-Robert Zandvliet
Elegie, 2015
Acrylic on linen
51 5/8 x 122 7/8 inches (131 x 312 cm)
(RZ2015/04)
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Untitled, 2014
Egg tempera on linen
28 3/8 x 24 3/4 inches (72 x 63 cm)
(RZ2014/12)
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“Since the mid-1990s Robert Zandvliet has struck a highly charged balance between representation and self-reflection in his paintings. Initially he took everyday motifs such as a hair clasp or a car’s rear-view mirror and, having reduced them to a minimum of panes and lines, enlarged them, sometimes to a huge extent. Following this he started to make groups of works, whose dynamic paint application underpins abstract pictorial structures yet also deliberately triggers particular associations. The viewer’s eye follows broad, sweeping brush strokes – only for a particular line to suddenly turn into a horizon. Yet, as his or her gaze roams feely through the landscape opening out in the painting, all at once it is drawn back into forceful brushwork and the tectonics of swirling colors.”
-Andreas Fiedler, in exhibition catalogue, Das dobbelte Bild, Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Switzerland, 2013
Robert Zandvliet working on the mural, Aan 't Groothoofd, Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands, 2019
“Brushstroke - line and form, movement, and trace of movement - create the painting in an immediately visible manner. The impression of gestural dynamism, however, provides no indication of the manner in which the pictures are created – they are most often not painted quickly. Zandvliet seeks, not emotional self-expression, but rather the correct picture. A stroke, a form, a color must fulfill a function within the picture.”
-Volker Adolphs, in exhibition catalogue, Beyond the Horizon, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany, 2006
Untitled, 2020
Egg tempera on linen
24 3/4 x 28 3/8 inches (63 x 72 cm)
(RZ2020/02)
Untitled, 2018
Egg tempera on linen
24 3/4 x 28 3/8 inches (63 x 72 cm)
(RZ2018/37)
Untitled, 2018
Egg tempera on linen
24 3/4 x 28 3/8 inches (63 x 72 cm)
(RZ2018/38)
Untitled, 2020
Egg tempera on linen
24 3/4 x 28 3/8 inches (63 x 72 cm)
(RZ2020/03)
Untitled, 2014
Egg tempera on linen
24 3/4 x 28 3/8 inches (63 x 72 cm)
(RZ2014/09)
Untitled, 2018
Egg tempera on linen
24 3/4 x 28 3/8 inches (63 x 72 cm)
(RZ2018/13)
Untitled, 2016
Acrylic on linen
24 3/4 x 28 3/8 inches (63 x 72 cm)
(RZ2016/3)
Untitled, 2013
Egg tempera on linen
24 3/4 x 28 3/8 inches (63.0 x 72.0 cm)
(RZ2013/23)
Untitled, 2014
Egg tempera on linen
28 3/8 x 24 3/4 inches (72 x 63 cm)
(RZ2014/12)
Robert Zandvielt in his studio, Rotterdam, Netherlands
In 2005, I introduced the size 63 x 72 cm (24 3/4 x 28 3/8 inches), the ratio 7:8. I once read in an interview by Harold Rosenberg with Willem de Kooning that he often used this proportion because he liked shapes that are roughly square...With the horizontal option, the work remains compact but does not become too panoramic and when I turn it a quarter turn, the work stands clearly. But usually I choose the horizontal option because it most naturally relates to my subject: the landscape.
-Robert Zandvliet
Untitled, 2003
Egg tempera on linen
79 7/8 x 102 3/4 inches (203 x 261 cm)
(RZ2003/41)
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I feel connected to the Dutch tradition: it’s part of my nature, it’s the language that I understand. And I do recognize it. In the use of white, for instance - the white of Vermeer, of Weissenbruch, of Mondriaan, and even of De Kooning - it’s a white that has a spatial quality. I can’t really describe it…. It’s a place where the air can get through.
-Robert Zandvliet
Tangerine, 2019
Acrylic and egg tempera on linen
83 7/8 x 106 1/4 inches (213 x 270 cm)
(RZ2019/27)
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Crack I (Door), 2018
Egg tempera on cotton
65 x 31 1/2 inches (165 x 80 cm)
(RZ2018/30)
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I’m not after a naturalistic rendering of light, but light that emerges from the painting itself. Before I start, the blank canvas is an over exposed image – that’s how I think of it. But as I paint with pigments, it becomes gradually darker. Rembrandt, you see, could put light onto the painting with the shine on a nose. For me, the light comes from behind; and with each layer that I add some of that light has to filter through.
-Robert Zandvliet
Crack II (Path), 2019
Egg tempera on cotton
65 x 31 1/2 inches (165 x 80 cm)
(RZ2019/08)
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“Zandvliet uses wide brushes to create the impulses towards movement and changes of direction in his paintings. By himself mixing the pigments with egg, water, and linseed oil, he controls the consistency of the tempera paint, which does not become tangible as material and mass but instead is applied in a quite liquid state, whether opaque or transparent. Thus it permits loose movements which bring together impressions of power and lightness.”
-Volker Adolphs, in exhibition catalogue, Beyond the Horizon, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; De Pont Museum Tilburg, Netherlands, 2006
Crack III (Track), 2020
Egg tempera and oil on linen
65 x 31 1/2 inches (165 x 80 cm)
(RZ2020/01)
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“Two conditions are fundamental to the conception of Robert Zandvliet’s work: ‘landscape’ is a topological concept that may look back onto a long tradition of landscape painting. Zandvliet starts from the topological concept and not from the topography of a landscape. But even outside the context of art, landscape today is an extremely determinate motif that appears as a fragment of rendered reality in quite different contexts and areas of life.”
-Andreas Fiedler, in exhibition catalogue, Brushwood, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2006
Installation of 9 egg tempera and oil on paper works, 9 1/2 x 12 1/4 inches (24 x 31 cm), each
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Robert Zandvielt in his studio, Rotterdam, Netherlands
“In his small-format works in particular, visual memories of landscapes may be activated during the actual painting process, but they are melted into the rhythm and the gesture of the painting, which generates the picture. This painting does not refer to a view of specific landscapes, but rather to the concept and in a certain sense to the idea of ‘landscape’.”
-Andreas Fiedler, in exhibition catalogue, Brushwood, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2006
In the end, I am always looking for that one image, that one form ... I want to create a form that can tolerate any content, the perfect form, in a way. That may always remain my quest. And indeed, perhaps that is somewhere in objects such as a moon, a cloud or a stone, which on the one hand seem almost nothing, but can also encompass everything. I hope, of course, that my images become more and more bare, free of the irrelevant. That I'll keep on getting closer to the essence.
-Robert Zandvliet
Robert Zandvliet and Alex Katz, opening reception of Pier and Ocean, Peter Blum Gallery, 2011.
Photo by Peter Bellamy.
Tangerine, 2019
Acrylic and egg tempera on linen
83 7/8 x 106 1/4 inches (213 x 270 cm)
(RZ2019/27)
Crack I (Door), 2018
Egg tempera on cotton
65 x 31 1/2 inches (165 x 80 cm)
(RZ2018/30)
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Crack II (Path), 2019
Egg tempera on cotton
65 x 31 1/2 inches (165 x 80 cm)
(RZ2019/08)
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Crack III (Track), 2020
Egg tempera and oil on linen
65 x 31 1/2 inches (165 x 80 cm)
(RZ2020/01)
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Untitled IA-10.21.99, 1999
Monotype
79 1/2 x 38 1/2 inches (201.93 x 97.79 cm)
(RZ IA-10.21.99)
Untitled V-10.22.99, 1999
Monotype
79 1/2 x 38 1/2 inches (201.93 x 97.79 cm)
(RZ V-10.22.99)
Untitled, 2019
Egg tempera and oil on paper
9 1/2 x 12 1/4 inches (24 x 31 cm)
(RZ19-07)
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*All works are subject to availability; all prices are subject to change.
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