09 December 2008

Last day of the Royal Awards

This is the first time while living in The Netherlands that I had the feeling I was watching a Mexican painting competition (from the times I lived there 20 years ago!). I can't explain this strong deja vu, there were some old fashioned paintings and I missed the huge quantity of "typical Dutch paintings" I am used to.
There was a strong "Ophuis" painting, with war theme and all. The paint strokes were more ordered than a real Ophuis', in fact the way it is painted reminded me strongly of my friend Henny Roest's work. Later at home I read that Ophuis self was a jury member, I wonder what were his thoughts when he saw this painting.
The Fiore de Koning painting was very different even to those I saw of hers last year, I was not as crazy for this painting as I am normally of her work.
Alex Jacobs's painting had an air of Peter Doig.


Winner: Helen Verhoeven

Emile Miedema

Heddy-John Appeldoorn


Raymond Cuijpers

Fiore de Koning

Maarten Overdijk

Julia Munstermann

Left: slightly Ophuis like

Winner: Sebastiaan Verhees

Winner: Alex Jacobs

Royal Awards From Gem: "Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands has presented the 2008 Royal Awards for Painting at GEM Museum of Contemporary Art to Alex Jacobs (Amsterdam), Sebastiaan Verhees (Berlijn), Helen Verhoeven (Den Haag)and Bas de Wit (Maastricht).The members of this year’s jury were: Stijn Huijts, Carla Klein, Ronald Ophuis, Marien Schouten, Gé-Karel van der Sterren, Wilma Sütö (chairman) and Barbara Visser. The exhibition at the GEM will be open to the public from 11 October to 7 December 2008."

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