Rob van Koningsbruggen
Untitled, 2007—2010
On loan to the exhibition Paintings 2003—2019 at Kunstmuseum The Hague,
the Netherlands
08.11.2019—23.02.2020

Curated by: Benno Tempel

Rob van Koningsbruggen has had a major museum exhibition every decade since the 1970s. The last one – a grand retrospective – was at Kunstmuseum The Hague in 2002. This autumn, in collaboration with the artist, we will be presenting an exhibition covering the period 2003 - 2019.

Nowadays Rob van Koningsbruggen occupies a lonely position in the Dutch art world, as his paintings scale unique heights in terms of their colour and form, says director Benno Tempel. Many of the paintings in the exhibition will be on display for the first time. Every time you look at Van Koningsbruggen’s paintings is a memorable experience. At first you’re taken aback, then they get under your skin, and you can’t get them out of your mind.

Van Koningsbruggen uses lots of colour in his abstract paintings, which features shapes like circles, rectangles and funnels. He generally works on several paintings at the same time. I make a painting, and then I see a shape emerge, he says. I transfer the shape to another canvas and continue there. Then I leave the other painting for six months. Sometimes I’m working on ten paintings at once. They’re patients, you know, you have to make them better. And then I suddenly have a colour on my brush and I look at the other painting and think: yeah. So I play the paintings off against each other.

Van Koningbruggen's painting Untitled originates from the G + W Collection.