Painters From The Netherlands

"I really believe that the general, happy mood of the people here [in Elberfeld, Germany] is largely caused by nature. At least I am experiencing that in places like these people are much more natural than in regions where nature offers them little or nothing to subtract their heart for some time from the hypocrisy of the world, and to taste a not-deceitful delight."

"Fortunately however, is that [painting] school where Mother Nature is placed in the foreground, and where only she is consulted to representate 'truth' on the canvas or panel. Only he knows the secrets of the manifold diversity of nature. His painting is a faithful copy of nature - which is the highest praise for a painter.."

"For a landscape painter.. ..simple natural scenes can also be delightful, as romantics does. Perhaps even more instructive, because the eye can find a more elementary harmony in it.. ..that's how the solemn [[w:Emmerich am Rhein|[river] Rhine for Emmerik]] was there to me; how very simple the scene nevertheless was, I found it very beautiful.. .Truly beautiful."

"Shall I now ask these palette-slaves what poetry means, and in how many forms it appears to us? They want to chain her [poetry], just as they are tied up themselves to their master's palette, [or] to some part of the sacred history.. ..to a folktale.. .. a miraculous landscape .. .. or other pompous imaginations."

"Beforehand I don't make any drawing of the object or objects which I want to paint on the canvas or panel.. ..but I start directly to situate the designed plan on the canvas - After having thoroughly sketched and thought over my composition, especially the arrangement of light and dark, I start to paint it broadly with oil-paint and try as much as possible to achieve the hue or the colouring, in which I want to see my landscape.. ..when it is definitely completed."

"After a long trip hitchhiking with Corneille to Friesland, where we came for the first time after the war [in 1946] we met Gerrit [Benner], a born painter with a Nordic fabulous side in his work. We were received by the Frisian stove with fragrant coffee and I gazed over the meadows with abstract cows, what were his paintings. We immediately called each other by the right name, also later when we met and said: 'Hey old robber, how are you?' (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"..in Friesland [up to c. 1954] Benner rarely had the opportunity to see anything of modern painting. The sense of identification of man with nature is the basis of his feeling for life and art. When he speaks about his surrounding world, the painter uses words as 'a miraculous world'. He paints in a colouring of moved simplicity; his colors, especially the primary ones, have a strong purity. His simplification of nature however is not an abstraction, the forms of animals and the landscape have never been abandoned completely.. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"We didn't really appreciated him. We found him an imitator [early 1960's]. All those little horses of him, they were just the horses of Hendrik Werkman. Not until he started to make those large colorful paintings with skies, he became an original artist. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"That guy is painting blue and yellow horses. He is really a lunatic! (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I love nature, what is not beautiful in nature, there are no ugly things. Sometimes the world oppresses me and then I always go back to nature, the source of all things. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I was kindly received by him [Gerrit Benner] and then he talked, with his crooked nose - because he had fallen off the chest as a child and his nose was crooked. And then he was sniffing all the time. Like: 'Yes, yes, the grass, the grass'. Then he said at some point: 'When you paint outdoors, you work from your feet up to above your head'. Well, just as simple as that, but you have to discover it yourself. You should try it. And that's it, that' it, for sure. That is one of the best lessons I ever got, that one remark by Gerrit Benner. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"[Nature] only give it you, when you carefully consider its majesty and greatness. Does it not present beautiful scenes in front of your eyes that impossibly could be described to you by somebody else?.. ..[scenes], which you can try to realize afterwards in your room on the canvas or panel. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Immediately and definitively [after starting a painting] I determine the effect of sunlight, day and shadow, without being concerned with any detail. This enable me to see in the started painting the whole of it, which my mind already saw before I begun to work - I see it appearing on the panel or canvas rather soon and can consider in this way the harmony of the composed objects and colors."

"I love Friesland, but I don't feel myself a Frisian. I am a human being, be called Gerrit Benner, who paints.. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"And I painted on and on, coarsely - not skillful at all and rather clumsy.. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"It's all about the atmosphere of nature, for sure, but I want the painting to arouse clarity, cheerfulness. When it is finished, then I have to live with it, that's why it must become a pleasant thing. Sun. Clarity. Never white-black, because there are so many shades in between! (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I am not a man of production, I am not a manufacturer. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I paint from my head [about his move from rural Friesland to the city of Amsterdam]. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"The further I get, the more I stand at the beginning. I'am Benner, but I do not say, I got it. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"In the city you can lose yourself; that's a good thing. It doesn't work in a small city. In Leeuwarden [in Friesland, where Benner lived until c. 1954] you always met yourself again and again. But in Amsterdam there is too much to do, that isn't possible here. It's a beautiful city where I revive. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"In the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam an honorary exhibition of the art-works of the woman-painter Jacoba van Heemskerck.. .The collection brought together gives a clear overview of 'working' and 'wanting' for this very special talent. Clearly shown is the road that had to lead her from naturalism to her recent monumental abstract 'compositions' in which she portrayed 'Life': to the great last meeting with 'Architecture'! That combination promised a triumph! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Suddenly and unexpectedly death ended up the life of this great person. Before finishing her task, this wonderful young woman died - J.B. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"When you paint outdoors, you work from your feet up to above your head. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"The [glass window]-designs lay ready for months [1922-23] but as the building did not proceed as quickly as it was expected, the glass-cutting was put off again and again. During the last spring it often made her anxious, that the work did not advance, as if she had the feeling that she would never see it finished. And so it was. When at last she had to lie down, never to rise again, the designs lay there, with all the indications how they had to be worked out. Thanks to these minute preparations it has been possible to finish them as a last witness of her genius."

"for Jacoba van Heemskerck"

"Yes ssjjure, it is Fffriesland, seen from an airplane."

"Don't bother about the result. Throw away your thinking of art, and then become yourself: just walk quietly in yourself, in your own ground."

"From the power of the senses, Jacoba von Heemskerck has created the images which give meaning to the world. Which interpret the world, Water and Mountain and Tree are her visual impressions, which became the painterly tools to create her pictures. Movement of the elements becomes element of movement. Form of Nature becomes art-form, and impression expression. Parts of the world get transformed into parts of Art. And parts of Art are combined together into one image.. .Jacoba van Heemskerck lived in and with Art. With all her thinking, senses and efforts.. ..her life continues, formed in Art. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"For you it must be a great satisfaction that you have done so much for modern art. If Der Sturm had not worked like this for ten years then Germany would not have been at the forefront of the movement. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"Here [in the Netherlands] there is absolutely nothing, nowhere and permanently committees to deliver the visual artists some money, since all are hungry. It is such a difficult time for Holland. I had flu, I was very sick and I am still too weak to work. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"..I am so often showing my work in Germany that I belong to the German moderns.. .I openly want to confess you that I don't value the new painting in my home country very much. That is why I don't have a lot of acquaintances among the painters. Everything here is so little progressive. People's life is to easy here. It is very difficult to keep wide-awake since all are sleeping here. I feel much more at home in Germany. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"On the whole [the alignment of a series of stained glass windows with the interior of a villa in The Hague] I have thought about all the time.. .I want to focus more on the architecture of the interior in general and that should we do together [with architect Buys].. .Now I was already thinking, the enormous color effect that the window will generate - and that will certainly become powerful - must be accompanied with strong colors - the hall -, otherwise the window itself will be too much isolated. For instance the staircase, could it be painted in strong colors and not [in] oak.. ..deep ultramarine blue or green, with a beautiful colorful carpet.. ..I feel I must make designs for carpets, to create in that way a beautiful unity with the stained glass as a whole. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I don't understand how many painters can be so short-sighted to value art from earlier periods as completely worthless. Every art is an expression of an era and only for that reason already it is interesting. A Rembrandt has gone other ways, but he has certainly also pursued the highest goals. That one can assert: it is not necessary for a painter to have an impression when he is painting an Image, is nonsense. Certainly an artist, if he is really an artist, always has an inner urge to create an Image and thus sees an impression for himself that he may not always be able to explain, because deeper feelings are very difficult to grasp in words, but he has an impression - otherwise he only makes paintings as pure brain work. And intellectual art I can't bear. You can not make abstract art as something on its own. One feel various forms in their inner coherence. For example: when reading a fairy tale I can get the idea to paint a forest in completely abstract forms with motifs of trees. Every abstract form has an inner meaning for me. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"Again I only gave numbers [of her art-works, she sent for the next Sturm-exhibition]. I stick to my idea of not giving titles. ..Titles are really disgusting romantic, and now in a while people will have hundreds of Spring's, Summers, Trees [paintings], to Liebknecht, Eberts, etc.. Above everything color and line have their own specific language, which doesn't want to be captured in a title. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"..Also Lady van Heemskerck van Beest has found in Cubism the direction in which she can now express herself preferably. The shape [of cubism] is already so familiar to her that she uses it without much difficulty and with her diligence and good will she moreover knows how to handle the right color soon. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"This evening the Anthroposophical Society invited me to give a lecture about modern art, on 13 March. They start to wake up here [in the Netherlands].. .Please, tell me something, what I should emphasize, what you find most important. I shall also read something from 'The Spiritual in Art' by Kandinsky.. .But we still have other views on the whole, isn't it. I don't always agree with Kandinsky, and often more with your views. So please write a little much.. .You know, for me it is always easier to paint my principles. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"Every day I am thinking about the Art school [which Walden wants to start in Germany, since 1915-16].. .If our pursuit is really to make great progress in future, the Art school must produce individualities who can with our assist really continue from their inside and start creating on their own, without always studying the pictures of other artists. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"All men forget that colors have to radiate to give the big [spiritual] expression. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"A revelation, of eternal truth, to mankind. In the middle [of Jacoba's 'Painting No. 23' ] the motif of a floating ship, with the radiant white sail, like a saint spreading his both arms to heaven to absorb all the wisdom of the divine. Next to it, and following the first, the other two [ships], also with immaculate-white sails, but the interior of them not yet unfolded that strong [as the first ship]. In this way they continue, quietly and surely, over the rippling water-surface, towards suffering humanity.. .In the foreground, on both sides, two heavy, powerful black figures of trees, their branches twisted and wringing to each other and thus creating the gate of misery and suffering, through which every person must go who wants to bring something to mankind, what can help. In large angular blocks the earth is shown below, from which the trees grow up, the earth and its fertility. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"A painting is good if it is not finished. Just like ideas. Finished ideas are dead.. .Everything is floating, just as in life – also life will never get ready. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I was in Rotterdam, but the exhibition there was horrible. Le Fauconnier has nothing to tell anymore. He has a dirty color now and has become a real academic. Mondrian is completely frozen, no poetry at all anymore. It's terrible that these people can not reach further with great ideals. To my taste paints far too much naturalistic. A big difference, these three, compared to [[w:Franz Marc|[Franz] Marc]], Kandinsky, Filla etc.. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"As an artist you can not stand for long in The Netherlands. You must see a lot and talk a lot about everything.. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"Once again I talked with some painters, but the modern artists [in The Netherlands ] write more than they paint. If you write about art in such a way and you want to paint always with a fixed plan, then you will lose completely the deep, glorious and spontaneous art. You always have to create the new from the very deep, inside. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I got the idea to paint people, in the way I see them. From one face I take to my own idea some very characteristic features of it and then I make of the whole a picture in colors and lines, in the way how I meet that person. The whole thing becomes not at all a portrait in the usual sense.. .I have tried to make types, but will built in more and more personal qualities and all that kind of things.. .Everything will be figured out fully abstract of course, it is just a personal feeling and no system at all. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"Jacoba van Heemskerck paints a tree. She doesn't want its appearance, not the object, not the expression which can already be made in some dashes of color to astonish the observer. It is indeed about a tree, but she wants the miracle: standing, spreading itself, bearing its leaves, reaching into space, moving, being a part of the world. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"Nothing special is happening here in the paintersworld [of the Netherlands]; everything stays firmly the same. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"The country [ Brittany ] is very beautiful and painterly one see stimulating color tones; but the more abstract one works, the more one transforms the sketch into combinations. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"That's the way it goes, you know, I'm always dissatisfied and always I want to go on. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I work a lot and I think a lot. I really want to try to paint on glass. .Please will you ask him [mr. architect Taut ] if there are any transparent colors, which one can use to paint on the glass directly.. .I want to dispose of a new technique in which the artist can paint on the glass directly instead of canvas. When one wants to reach colors spiritually-bright, then a time will come that oil-paint and canvas are no longer suitable.. .So, if you have time, please ask Mr. Taut if he understands my view and maybe he knows the ways how I can follow my direction. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"It is a terrible, but also tremendous time. Personally I find it moreover so important for my art to live now.. .These times force you to think over a lot and work very hard, in Nature now a strong creative force is working. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"He [Jopie] represents why I love The Netherlands and the Dutch people. Not the fancy Dutch living along the [Amsterdam] canals, but outside, in the real country. That doesn't seem to exist any longer, but it is still there - alive in the heart of the people. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"