Jan Sierhuis (1928) - Destructie

Early work by Jan Sierhuis (1928–2023), dated 1961. The painting bears on the front the signature and dating ‘Sierhuis 61’. On the reverse it is painted ‘Sierhuis / DESTRUCTIE / 1961 / AMSTERDAM’.\n\nThe composition is built from a powerful confrontation between figurative and abstract-expressionist forms. At the bottom appears a red-painted human figure, surrounded and partly cut off by heavy black areas and broad, sinuous strokes in deep blue and green. A warm yellow ground forms the contrasting field against which these shapes stand out sharply. To the right is included a red-circled, drawing-like form. Sierhuis has applied the paint in alternating opaque, thin, and very impasto layers; broad brushstrokes, scratchy outlines, and locally unpainted canvas remain visible. This gives the surface a pronounced physical and dynamic structure.\n\nDestructie dates from Sierhuis’s early period, in which abstraction and recognizable figurative elements could coexist. Canvas dimensions about 65 × 70 cm; framed about 78 × 83 cm.\n\nBiographie kunstenaar\nJan Sierhuis (Amsterdam, 1928–2023) belongs to the generation of Dutch artists who, shortly after World War II, sought connection with experimental painting. He was involved in 1948 with the CoBrA movement, but because of his young age he was not an official member; the Cobra Museum owns several of his works, including an Abstracte Compositie from 1960. Museum Cobra In 1962 Sierhuis belonged to the artists of the Amsterdam group Scorpio.\n\nIn the 1950s and 60s he worked predominantly abstractly and developed a powerful expressionist painting style, after which the human figure, portraits, landscapes and later flamenco appeared more and more prominently in his oeuvre. In Gelderland province Sierhuis received among other things the Royal Subsidy for Painting, the Thérèse van Duyl-Schwartze Prize and in 1987 the Jeanne Oosting Prize; in 2002 he was named Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau.