Eugène Brands

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Eugène Brands (born January 15, 1913 in Amsterdam ; † January 15, 2002 ibid) was a Dutch painter and member of the CoBrA artists' association .

life and work

Eugène Brands attended business school in Amsterdam from 1927 to 1931. He then studied advertising design at the Kunstnijverheidsschool in Amsterdam until 1934. After short-term employment in the advertising industry, he finally made the decision to become an artist.

In 1939, Eugène Brands had its first exhibition in Zandvoort City Hall. In 1946 Eugène Brands took part in the Jonge Schilders / Young Painters exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum and made new contacts with Karel Appel and Corneille . In 1948 Brands joined the Experimentele Groep in Holland and later became an important member of CoBrA . The meeting between Eugène Brands and Willem Sandberg , the then director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, led to the major exhibition in 1949, at which the CoBrA association presented itself to the Dutch public. After a year, Brands left CoBrA and retired to his studio for the next 10 years. From 1960 he gradually gave up figurative representation in favor of abstraction. In 1976 he was appointed to teach at the art academy in 's-Hertogenbosch .

“As an autodidact, Eugène Brands [...] is going through a highly individualistic development. In 1939/1940 he worked with surrealist objets trouvés . During the war he experimented with informal ink and watercolor techniques. He is guided by the urge to seek out the magical in all appearances, to the art of indigenous peoples, whose music and ritual objects he begins to collect early on. [...] When Eugène Brands gave his brief guest appearance at COBRA, he followed lyrical abstraction. The discovery of the children's drawings in 1950, the time of his greatest closeness to COBRA, led to the attempt to mainly extract their magic and capture it in the picture. By 1960 a rich world of motifs of enigmatic signs was created in oil paints on paper and canvas: lock and key, arrows, legs that wander down into the composition from above, hands, free floating ships and other things. He continues to develop this mysterious symbolism, sometimes abstract, sometimes surreal. "

- Willemijn Stokvis

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Eugene Brands Gallery , accessed February 15, 2018.
  2. ^ Stichting Eugène Brands , accessed February 15, 2018.
  3. ^ The Eugene Brands Gallery , accessed February 15, 2018.
  4. ^ Cobra, Willemijn Stokvis, An International Movement in Art after the Second World War, pages 14 and 24, Barcelona 1987, ISBN 3-07-50-9200-2
personal data
SURNAME Brands, Eugène
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch painter and member of the CoBrA artists' association
DATE OF BIRTH January 15, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH January 15, 2002
Place of death Amsterdam