To write an article about paintings in The Hague for Villa La Repubblica i visited amongst others PARTS Project where paintings by Jeroen Doorenweerd (1956) and documentation about Gutai are on show. Click here to read the article (in Dutch).
Gutai was a Japanese artists group in the 1950s and 60s which radically experimented with paint and other media.
Their work existed mainly of actions and performances.
They also worked with paint but without the usual tools, using alternatives like their bodies, their feet, machines and by smashing bottles with paint on the ground.
The aim was to find new terms of aesthetics and to exterminate the individual as much as possible to let the materials speak for themselves.
Doorenweerd only later heard about Gutai when he was already making paintings based on actions, and he immediately felt an affinity with the group.
His works presently on show were made by moving a hanging bucket with a hole and paint running and splashing through it over his canvasses.
His works, like those of the Gutai group, are far less about personal lyricism or philosophy than about action itself.
Which makes it more radical than the usual action painting.
[Click on the pictures top enlarge]
©Villa Next Door 2017
Content of all photographs courtesy to Jeroen Doorenweerd and PARTS Project, Den Haag
Bertus Pieters
Villa Next Door 