Wim Oepts, Landscape (Provence), 1979, oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm, private collection
Wim Oepts and the painters of the sunny South offers a comprehensive overview of the works of artist Wim Oepts (1904-1988) and his Dutch contemporaries. Oepts is a popular painter, known for his abstracted colourful landscapes. In the sun-drenched south of France, he found inspiration for his typical paintings full of contrasting colours.
Following the sun
"I have really been inspired by the South", said painter Wim Oepts (1904-1988). In 1937, the artist - born and bred in Amsterdam - discovered, in the picturesque fishing village of Collioure in the south of France, the magical Mediterranean light that makes the world tingle and glow with colour. From that moment on, he permanently abandoned the business-like and dark neorealism that his discoverer and mentor Charley Toorop (1891-1955) had taught him, while he was just about to break through in the Netherlands.
Oepts settled in Paris in 1939. He felt ‘liberated’ in the city of light and would continue to live there until his death. Influenced by pure colourists like Pierre Bonnard, André Derain and his French teacher Othon Friesz, his art developed into an ode to colour in France. In the summer, he would follow the sun, especially to Saint-Tropez. In the winter, he would work on his sketches at home and turn them into paintings. Landscapes, including village and harbour views, became his exclusive subject from the end of the 1940s. Typical are the large patches and the bright, often unrealistic colours. Blue trees and green skies are not uncommon in Oepts' works.
Wim Oepts (1904-1988), Bridge, 1984, oil on canvas, 46 x 55 cm, private collection
Wim Oepts and his Dutch contemporaries
The exhibition Wim Oepts and the painters of the sunny South in Museum JAN presents a comprehensive overview of Oepts' body of work. The exhibition is focused on his French period, in which the painter managed to attract a steady group of collectors. In addition, the exhibition includes a selection of works by other Dutch painters. For shorter or longer periods of time, these contemporaries of Oepts were also inspired by the Mediterranean light. Wim Oepts may be known as the painter of the sunny south, but he certainly was not the only one.
Paintings by artists like Dirk Filarski (1885-1964), Matthieu Wiegman (1886-1971), Charles Eyck (1897-1983), Fred Sieger (1902-1999) and Otto B. de Kat (1907-1995), as well as by a later generation of artists, including Nicolaas Wijnberg (1918-2006) and Jef Diederen (1920-2009), place the work of Oepts in a broader perspective and at the same time underscore his individual, unique rendition of the sun-drenched French landscape.
Guest curator: Feico Hoekstra
The catalogue Wim Oepts and the painters of the sunny South accompanying this exhibition is published by Waanders publishers. € 23,95
24 x 29 cm, 80 pages, paperback, ISBN 978 94 6262 438 2