Museum Kranenburgh, together with contemporary artist Krijn de Koning, is exploring its collection of landscape paintings by the Bergen School and their contemporaries. Krijn de Koning has selected works by artists including Leo Gestel, Dirk Filarski, Arnout Colnot, Gerrit Willem van Blaaderen, and Edgar Fernhout. He connects the landscapes with the museum’s wooded surroundings by incorporating them into a space-filling color composition.
Around the Bergen school
A collection exploration with Krijn de Koning
Krijn de Koning
Visual artist Krijn de Koning creates work that explores the intersection between architecture and art. He uses bright colors reminiscent of 20th-century modernist movements like De Stijl and Minimalism. De Koning: “Showing paintings at Kranenburgh is about capturing attention. The high windows in this museum offer beautiful views of the surrounding forest. In the galleries, the colors of nature connect with the colors of the painting. What wins? The world outside or the world inside the painting.”
De Koning has work in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, and has created large installations in museums in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. His installations of museum collections can be seen at Centraal Museum Utrecht and Edinburgh College of Art, among others.
Gorgeous Green
Around the Bergen School: A Collection Exploration is a follow-up to the successful collection exhibition, Here You Feel the World Turning, which was on display at Kranenburgh in the summer of 2016. With these explorations, Kranenburgh offers a 21st-century perspective on the early 20th-century Bergen School, which forms the foundation of the museum.
Artists like Filarski and Colnot frequently work in nature. The diverse landscape allows them to portray polders and forests, as well as sea and dunes, on location. Closer to home, the Het Oude Hof estate is a popular spot. Four works by renowned painter Arnout Colnot alone, created here, are included in the exhibition. A generation later, Edgar Fernhout’s masterpiece, “Autumn,” is also on display.
