"With landscapes, painting became an independent activity. I do still need the depiction, since I have to know what I’m painting. But as the painting itself becomes the primary thing, the depictive aspect loses its significance."
- Robert Zandvliet, 1998
insight | landscape | robert zandvliet
February 16, 2021From the very start, the landscape has been a recurrent theme in Robert Zandvliet's oeuvre. In his paintings there is no rendering of a specific place to be found. Due to the degree of abstraction, the origins of the image are often scarcely recognizable. Even when landscape can indeed be recognized as such, the depiction plays a subordinate role. The entire focus is placed on the pictorial representation of landscape-like qualities: vastness, light, spatial dynamics, a changeable and fluctuating quality or, on the contrary, a tranquil and timeless one.