Henk Vierveijzer

HENK VIERVEIJZER ( Dutch artist)

Powerful lines, bright colours and grotesque figures. The expressive works by Henk Vierveijzer  are right in your face. They look slightly chaotic, but they represent an orderly chaos. Although the foundation emerges quite spontaneously, the artist continuously introduces well considered nuances, paints over certain fragments, or softens these until the chaos has been restrained.  Because of this the works maintain their spontaneity and explosive strength, whilst conveying their message. A message about the insignificance of the individual, about the beauty and simultaneously unbelievably absurdity of life. The artist illustrates his outlook of life through a large dose of relative humour.

Henk Vierveijzer works from disorder. On an empty canvas he starts with chaos by carelessly throwing paint around. With strong movements colours are introduced through which spontaneously different images are created. By stepping back he examines which elements will be necessary to achieve an exciting result. The superfluous elements are then painted over. Henk is continuously confronted with the pressure of thoughtful selection between those elements, whilst still maintaining the spontaneity of the artistic process.  Finally the created chaos will be alleviated and the result will be exciting as well as recognisable.

Vierveijzer can be placed with the ‘Nieuwe Schilderkunst’ (New Art). This Dutch movement began more than thirty years ago as a reaction to the formal, abstract and conceptual art forms of the Sixties and Seventies. Examples of this ‘new art’ like Germany’s Anselm Kiefer and Holland’s Alphons Freijmuth are  sources of inspiration for Vierveijzer.

His recent works show life’s relativity and underlines, according to the artist himself, the insignificance of our being. The artist illustrates this through his stimulating sense of humour, particularly in relation to the titles.

He brings not only his paintings but also himself into perspective: “I just paint pictures.”

Vierveijzer can consider himself a part of a select group of artists whose work has won more than one prize. Only recently he won the Dutch Olympic Sport and Art Contest, while in Lausanne he finished 5th in the Olympic World Contest.  The jury of the Dutch contest (amongst whom Rudy Fuchs) concluded as follows:  “The winning canvas, Hurray for 4, represents the optimum freshness of the Dutch arts”.

Vierveijzer’s work is included in several (international) business and private collections.