Gérard van den Eerenbeemt 1963

Gérard van den Eerenbeemt. 1963. Gouache on cardboard. 47x52cm

Gerard van den Eerenbeemt had a great track record as an artist. His recognizable style, as earthy as it is poetic, always takes the thought further than the performance or anecdote. He was educated at the Rijksacademie voor Beeldende Kunsten (Amsterdam / 1958) and immediately afterwards he won the Royal Grant for Painting in 1959 and again a year later. Together with the poet Gerrit Kouwenaar, he made the graphic map Without Colors (1962). In 1965 he did the set and costume design for the opera 'Labyrinth' by Peter Schat, visualized the score Signs (1970) by composer Ton Bruynel for the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and he was co-founder of 'Raam 75' and the rather legendary painting community ' IJmuider Circle '. He published collections of poems (Salt / Liquorice -1977 and Melk en Mest -1984) and had several sculpture commissions. Together with Gerrit Kouwenaar he made the graphics folder "Without colors" in 1962. Van den Eerenbeemt did the set and costume design for Peter Schat's opera "Labyrinth" in 1965. He was responsible for the coordination of art projects in the Rotterdam Library and the District Court of Haarlem. In the few seasons that he taught at Ateliers 63 in Haarlem (a post-academic training where young visual artists could work in their own studios, with criticism and support from renowned artists and art criticism) and the Academies in Amersfoort and Kampen, he has a powerful and indelible influenced several generations of younger artists. In 1988, the former Shamrock Ice Factory in IJmuiden, where Van den Eerenbeemt had his studio, was completely reduced to ashes. Oeuvre and personal archive were completely destroyed in this fire. Only the extensive collection (more than a hundred works) owned by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the work in private collections and in the collection of the municipality of Velsen have been preserved. In 1992 Van den Eerenbeemt traveled through India for almost a year. On the way he made sketches, sometimes even made with mud fingers on paper. This resulted in the series 'Indian letters' (wax pigment paintings on paper) in 1993. Since 1996, Van den Eerenbeemt has lived and worked in France, on the southernmost slopes of Champagne.