Gijs van Lith (1984) - Expressionistisch interieur

Gijs van Lith (1984–). Expressionist interior. Oil on canvas. Early key work by the artist from 2008 in which he moved toward a very professional artist. Size including frame 55x65 cm. The painting and the frame are in very good condition.

The work of the versatile Dutch artist Gijs van Lith changes the expectations and ideas that an observer typically has about what a painting can or should be. If we analyze the origin of his creative process, we see that Van Lith comes very close to the fundamental characteristics of action painting, also known as gestural abstraction or abstract expressionism. In this painting style the artist lets the colors drip spontaneously onto the canvas, throws them on, or smears them, instead of applying them carefully. The result emphasizes the physical act of painting itself, as is the case with American Abstract Expressionism and with Tachisme, a painting style in abstract art that originated in France in the 1940s and 1950s and is also called Informal Art. Here the painting is experienced solely as a product of actions and matter.

Gijs van Lith focuses his artistic inquiry primarily on painting, but his oeuvre also includes sculptures and installations. The creative process, the choice of material and the image strategy – what we understand as the modus operandi – play a fundamental role and form the starting point for the essential groundwork of every new creation. Van Lith regards the canvas on which a painting is made as equally important as the material with which he paints. Aspects such as materiality, the originality of the action, the relationship between the time of action and the timelessness of the work, and the clarity with which the physicality of the work is conveyed undoubtedly span his entire oeuvre. In recent years his painting method has even acquired a more plastic dimension, allowing him to create, develop, and handle his work in an increasingly dynamic and materially more fluid manner. The relationship between process and finished work becomes an interactive dialogue in which there is no front or back.

Before his works come into being, judgment is often suspended due to an all-encompassing painter’s haze, or, as he puts it himself, a “beast mode,” a creative state in which the artist feels more like a beast guided by instinct and intuition. Van Lith makes no distinction between deliberate actions and possibilities, between luck and deliberately executed gestures. The result is energetic and dynamic works that exist in an endless open dialogue between consciousness and the subconscious.

Gijs van Lith, born in 1984, pursued his art education at the art academy AKV St Joost in ’s-Hertogenbosch (NL). After earning his bachelor’s degree, he a few years later obtained his master’s degree at the same academy and established himself as an autonomous artist. Van Lith’s work quickly attracted attention in the artistic world; the artist has been nominated several times for encouragement prizes for young artists and in 2009 he won the Thieme Art Young Talent Award. His work has since gained international recognition and is included in national and international private and corporate collections. In 2018 a monumental installation by the artist was exhibited at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam and in 2020 his work was shown at Het Noordbrabants Museum in ’s-Hertogenbosch.