Onderdendam

About this artwork.

Abe Johannes Kuipers (1918 - 2016) was a visual artist and typographer. After lessons at the Groningen Academy Minerva, he started a career as a painter after the war. Kuipers has a special position in post-war painting. Although he was briefly a member of the art society “Het Narrenschip” (Ship of Fools), which was founded in 1950 by three former Ploeg members, he worked for most of his life on his own. After initially specializing as a fine painter, he became increasingly involved with pop art and graphic techniques from the end of the 1950s. He worked for Wolters-Noordhoff publishers, among others, and was responsible for the layout of the exhibition catalogs of the Groninger Museum. In 1980 he was awarded the H.N. Werkmanprice for his entire oeuvre.

In 2007 the film The inner reservoir – a portrait of the artist Abe Kuipers, about the life and work of the artist, was presented in the Center for Visual Arts Groningen (now Kunstpunt). In 2014-2015 there was a major exhibition of his work in the Groninger Museum, Abe Kuipers – in pastel, the first museum solo exhibition to focus entirely on his free work.

He painted Onderdendam in 1954 and was bought from Abe Kuipers in 2006 to have a full overview of his oeuvre with early and recent work in the City Hall. Onderdendam is a village in Groningen with a protected townscape in the municipality of Het Hogeland.

Facts & Figures.

• Artist(s)
  Abe Kuipers

• Year of creation
  1954

• Dimensions (in cm)
  68x83

• Collection
  Town Hall Collection

• Technic
  Gouache