New Artist Spotlight: Robert Zandvliet at GRIMM

Robert Zandvliet’s paintings emerge from his deep contemplation of the natural elements and the composition of painting. He creates large, sweeping canvases that draw out the contrast between our internal and external perceptions of the world and the interplay between abstract and representational elements.

Zandvliet, born in 1970 in Terband, the Netherlands, and currently based in Haarlem, the Netherlands, maneuvers between conceptual and direct representations of the natural world. His practice is a journey of self-examination through the very act of painting. While his paintings focus on the natural world, he resists realism and favors disrupting traditional scenes of the outdoors with the artist’s gesture.​​

Ahead of its Frieze London booth featuring Zandvliet’s work, GRIMM has announced its new representation of the Dutch artist. Additionally, the gallery will present Zandvliet’s new work in a solo presentation in its London gallery in April 2024.

Over his nearly 30-year-long career, Zandvliet has presented solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, the Netherlands; and the Kunstmuseum in Bonn, Germany, among other institutions.

Jorg Grimm, the founder of GRIMM, remarked, “Robert’s work articulates the act of painting and a dedication to capturing the essence of a subject in a remarkably distinct way. I’ve watched his work evolve for many years, first encountering his paintings in 1998 during his solo show at the De Pont Museum, which made a lasting impression and pointed me in the direction of becoming a gallerist years later.”

Zandvliet’s most recent series, “Paradaidha”—named after the term for a landscape garden in Old Persian, and the origin of the word “paradise”—explores the shifting qualities of green in nature. In these paintings, he depicts the garden’s grasses, trees, leaves, and plants, which are multiplied and blurred as if seen through the fata morgana phenomenon that affects objects at the edge of the horizon. In this series, Zandvliet experiments with movement, adding shimmering leaves to a recurring curved motif, such as in Paradaidha Pons (2023).

This series stems from Zandvliet’s perennial interest in the natural elements, as well as in the meaning of color. His previous exhibition, “Le Corps de la Couleur,” presented at Bernhard Knaus Fine Art in 2022, took a philosophical approach to the hues that cover his canvas. Each of these paintings is based on a single color, which inspires its subject: Vos (2021), for instance, a canvas of meticulously painted orange-brown fur, contains the Dutch word for “fox.” This approach points to Zandvliet’s enduring desire to find truth through his painting.