Hens van der Spoel (1904-1987) - Onbekend

Painting by Hens van der Spoel (1904-1987)

Hens van der Spoel
(1904-1987), painter

"As soon as I began painting around 1915, it immediately took an abstract turn. At that time I was not at all aware of the existence of a European or Dutch avant-garde movement."

Van der Spoel began painting around the age of eleven.

Van der Spoel was born in Kampen in 1904 and studied from 1924 to ’28 at the Rijks Normaalschool in Amsterdam. He studied, among others, with Klaas van Leeuwen, Huib Luns, and Jan van Tongeren. In 1932 he married Nel Houtman, the ceramicist. They moved to Goes, where he taught drawing at the Rijks HBS. Five years later he had his first exhibition at the art museum of Middelburg. Through the well-known painter Jan Sluijters he obtained an exhibition at the Van Lier art hall in Amsterdam. A second exhibition did not take place due to the outbreak of World War II.

During the war Van der Spoel played an active role in organizing secret meetings with anti-Nazi artists and intellectuals who had refused to register with the Kultuurkamer and were therefore cut off from contact with the public.

After 1945 there was a definitive breakthrough for Van der Spoel with a number of exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad. Han Wezelaar and Schuurman organized in 1946 an overview exhibition of modern Dutch art, which also visited a number of Swiss and Scandinavian cities. For Van der Spoel this meant his first foreign exhibition. Van der Spoel mainly painted in gouache on paper, endlessly corrected and constantly seeking a perfect balance between abstraction and recognizability.

Wezelaar’s friendship with the painter Hens van der Spoel and Nel Houtman likely began in 1930 in Paris. What Braque and Rouault have meant for Van der Spoel, were Maillol and Despiau for Wezelaar. Van der Spoel had a disdain for associations and Wezelaar campaigned for Van der Spoel’s work, which he admired very much.

Van der Spoel lived in Goes, until 1956 when he moved to Zomerdijkstraat 16-I. He worked as a teacher and later deputy director at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy until his retirement in 1969.


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