Rob Scholte

Rob Scholte 2010 during a reading at the Incubate Festival in Tilburg

Rob Scholte (born June 1, 1958 in Amsterdam ) is a Dutch painter , sculptor , installation artist , collage artist and university lecturer .

Education and life

Scholte began collecting everyday disposable materials from the age of 16 and later used them for his artistic work. Scholte first studied in 1975 at the Acadademie Minerva in Groningen and in 1976 at the Vrije Acadademie in The Hague . From 1977 to 1982 he studied painting and audiovisual media at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. From 1988 to 1994 Scholte lived in Brussels .

Rob Scholte had lectureships at numerous art academies, such as the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam in 1988 and the Royal Danish Academy of Art in Copenhagen in 1991 . From 1993 to 1998 he taught as a professor of painting at the Kassel Art College . From 1999 to 2001 at the Artesis Hogeschool Antwerp .

From 1994 to 1997 Scholte was married to the photographer and actress Mirjam Hoogendijk . Rob Scholte has two children and has been married to Lijsje Snijder since 2006 . Scholte lives and works in Punta del Hidalgo on Tenerife ( Spain ) and in Bergen (North Holland) ( Netherlands ).

attack

On November 24, 1994, Rob Scholte lost both lower legs in the explosion of a car bomb attached to the chassis of his blue BMW in the Laurierstraat in Amsterdam. Since then he has been dependent on a wheelchair . For many years, Scholte has had to struggle with subsequent traumatic stress and psychological limitations.

The writer Joost Zwagerman published his novel “Gimmick” in 1989, in which he portrayed the art scene in Amsterdam as a melting pot of drugs , gambling debts and money laundering . This novel became a breeding ground for rumors of all kinds at the time of the attack on Rob Scholte , and there were suspicions circulating about Rob Scholte's connections in the seedy environment of the Amsterdam underworld. The attack was viewed as retaliation for failing to meet obligations. Rob Scholte suspected the perpetrator to be among his fellow artists.

“One of my mistakes was that I wasn't humble, he says self-critically. I provoked my friends. Envy came up. Hate. Holland is a country without mountains. If someone grows too high there, he will be flattened. "

- Rob Scholte

He publicly voiced suspicions against fellow artists, such as the poet Koos Dalstra , who in turn sued him for defamation and decided the process in his favor. Rob Scholte commissioned the detective Jeroen van Oostveen to collect further evidence . The attack has not been solved and the investigation was closed in 2002.

The official police investigations assume that the attack was aimed at attorney Oscar Hammerstein , who also drove a blue BMW 325i , which also had a license plate similar to Scholte's car. These similarities are said to have led to confusion on the part of the perpetrator, especially since the other BMW was also parked not far from Laurierstraat. In 1995 a Molotov cocktail was thrown against the window of his house in Tenerife .

From 1996 to 1999, Scholte had a studio in his house on Tenerife, similar to the baroque workshop customs of the 17th century, with executives. Since 1996 there have been changing residences in the Netherlands and Tenerife. In the 2010s he founded his own museum in an old post office in Den Helder , North Holland .

plant

The heterogeneous work includes figurative painting and graphic prints as well as collages made from the most varied of everyday disposable materials, which he has obsessively collected since he was 16 . In particular, he accumulated illustrated printed matter, advertisements , metal and textiles . Rob Scholte made his debut in 1982 with children's book illustrations . In his figurative painting in acrylic , oil and mixed media , he quotes, plagiarizes and varies motifs from art and media , which give him the habit of being a koning van de kopieerkunst . The thematic triplicity of original , copy and copyright plays a constitutive and important role in the entire work. The figure composition of the early major work Utopia 1986 refers to the Olympia of 1863 by Édouard Manet , which in turn refers to the Venus de Urbino of 1538 by Titian . Scholte does not quote either of the two variants, but instead stages a variant of this nude motif that is iconically anchored in kitsch and trivial art as a jointed wooden doll with an African servant figure. An art critic found out that Scholte's variant was an unfair image copy based on an English template. Scholte responded to this accusation in 1988 with the satirizing painting Nostalgia . As his self-portrait from 1988, Scholte also displayed a yellow copyright signet © on a red background.

Rob Scholte works on the problems of reproduction and the self-image of painting and art in general.

He received his largest order in 1990 for the complete copy factory Huis ten Bosch , in a Japanese amusement park near Nagasaki . From 1991 to 1995, the mural and ceiling painting Aprés nous le déluge, rich in art, was created on over 1000 square meters . The monumental work was carried out by twelve assistants according to Scholte's specifications. The Oranjesaal copy , decorated from floor to ceiling, turns Scholte into a psychedelic temple. After 2000, the daily flood of images from the mass media became the focus of his critical art. Outstanding are the phillumenist collage series and installations Lucifer in Paradise from 2006 to 2009 and also the group of works Plug-Ins from 2000. The carefully painted works are produced by his assistants and signed by both the assistants and him.

documenta 8 contributions

For documenta 8 he exhibited a fairground machine in a fool's costume that held a sketch in front of him. When the hand crank was operated, the same song was always played. He also set up a picture with a baroque table with a blue veined marble top on which there is a drawing. He thereby faked the reality.

Works (selection)

• 1991–1995 Après nous le déluge “After us the deluge” He created his largest wall and ceiling painting to date (1200 m²) (with twelve assistants and furniture specially designed for the room by Harald Vlugt) with the war image in Nagasaki, Japan is located in the rebuilt building of the Dutch palace residence.
• 1988 Self-portrait: a yellow copyright symbol on a red background
• 1984 E = mc²: a subtle homage to Albert Einstein. The deception lies in the detail: the four digits of the photo-realistic clock show an impossible time. 1 p.m. 97

Solo exhibitions (selection)

• 2012: Mount Lucifer in paradise Galerie Frank Taal, Rotterdam
• 2011: Rob Scholte Zakdoeken Project Space, Amsterdam
• 2009: Lucifer in paradise Scala Gallery, Berlin
• 2008: Rob Scholte Mount Lucifer Art Bunker Forum for Contemporary Art, Nuremberg
• 2007: Rob Scholte Galería Leyendecker, Santa Cruz de Tenerife
• 2006: Rob Scholte Heitsch Gallery, Munich
• 1987: Kunstverein Kassel, Kassel

Group exhibitions (selection)

• 2018: CVs of Rob Scholte's pupil, Kunstverein Kassel , Kassel
• 2017: Frans Hals Museum: Humor , Haarlem
• 1990: he paid the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of
• 1987: documenta 8 , on which he caused a sensation with a picture in picture parody of Edvard Munch's famous work Der Schrei , in which the painter was seen in the form of a wind-up tin clown.

Web links

• Rob Scholte's project in Nagasaki ( Memento from June 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) at cultuurnetwerk.nl
• Portrait at kunstmarkt.com
• Biography at kunstmarkt.com

Individual evidence

1. ^ Art college lost a star . In: dirkschwarze.net .
2. ↑ ^{a b} Art Rob Scholte Gallery . In: kunstmarkt.com .
3. ↑ Rob Scholte . In: digischool.nl .
4. ↑ art-magazin 9/1999, Frank Nicolaus Today I paint the beauty  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ uit Nieuwe Revue no. 14 2003, Robert Vuijsje, photography Kristiaan Koster . In: sudsandsoda.com .
6. ^ De Telegraaf, November 1994 newspaper Rob Scholte's wrecked BMW
7. ^ ^{A b c} Günter Metken : documenta 8. Weber & Wiedemeyer GmbH, Kassel 1986 p. 13
8. ↑ ^{a b} ArtFacts.net . In: ArtFacts.net .