Marinus Bies (1894-1975) - Landschap met vogels

This landscape by Marinus Bies (1894–1975), labeled on an old label as ‘Landschap met vogels’ and dated around 1960, shows an open rural area with a few farmsteads beneath a notably high sky. The low horizon gives the heavens a dominant position within the composition. Above the buildings, a large flock of birds flies, indicated with rapid, dark brushstrokes against the light blue and cream of the clouded sky.

The scene is built up in broad horizontal blocks of color. Dark green and nearly black in the foreground blend into ocher and orange-red, after which the reddish-brown roofs and dark outlines of the farmhouses form the transition to the sky. Bies uses a powerful, direct brushwork with locally impastoed paint. Especially in the clouds, vegetation, and buildings the individual strokes remain markedly visible. The landscape is built more from color fields and rhythmic touches than from finely worked details.

Executed in oil on panel, signed lower left ‘Bies’.
Dimensions of the work about 30 × 40 cm; with frame about 46 × 56 cm.
Provenance: private collection, F. de V., Eindhoven.

Artist’s biography
Marinus Bies (Aarle-Rixtel, 1894–1975), full name Martinus Johannes Bies, was a Dutch painter and draughtsman whose oeuvre is closely tied to the Brabant landscape, in particular the Peel. He was a student of Arnold Marc Gorter and Jan Kruysen and developed a powerful, freely painted visual language in which landscape, color, and atmosphere are central. From 1933 he worked as a professional artist. In 1938 and 1939 Bies participated in group exhibitions; during this period the Van Abbemuseum acquired a Peel landscape by him. His work was subsequently exhibited at the Rijksmuseum as well. On the occasion of his hundredth birth anniversary, Museum Kempenland Eindhoven organized an exhibition of his oeuvre in 1994. In 2025 his fiftieth death anniversary in the Peel region was commemorated with a series of exhibitions centered on his landscape art.