Exhibition in Gallery-Museum-Bies

The exhibition 'Winter Exhibition' at Gallery-Museum-Bies is on display now until 23 February 2024. Open on Boxing Day and on Sundays thereafter.

A white snow cover is certainly one of the rare weather conditions nowadays, as well as back in the 20th century in the Netherlands. When it finally happens again, it still captures many people's imagination. A white Christmas, the feeling of skating over natural ice, making snowmen, throwing snowballs and, for those who prefer the snowy to the uncertain, a trip to the mountains.

Not surprisingly, artists, especially landscape painters, also find a special source of inspiration in it. The snow cover brings more light into the dark days. The landscape gets less colour, but then has an extra strong graphic effect. Greater contrasts between light and dark, contours and silhouettes get a better grip on what is perceived. Some natural details turn into white areas, stream valleys draw extra into the landscape. These but very temporary changes respond to a need, that of perception variation of our environment. But human and animal behaviour and activities also change. Think of all kinds of winter activities that humans will engage in. Even in the 20th century, the period when most of the paintings and etchings on display in this exhibition were made, artists inspired skating fun, winter walks, flooded and then frozen meadows to create captivating images.

Looking at the work of the painter Marinus Bies (1894-1975), who lived and worked in Aarle-Rixtel all his life, it appears that the aspects just mentioned strongly stimulated his imagination and thus inspired the painter to many winter paintings. By painter Henk Bies (1928-2006), the very fine canvas 'Mole catchers in thawing weather' is on display. But also in his abstract works from the 1960s, winter experiences often asserted themselves. The canvases 'Charred remains in the snow' and 'Severe winter' are exemplary of this. By the painter Frans Manders ( born 1931), there are very refined etchings of the Brabant countryside, belonging to this painter's early work. A work by Antoon Kruysen (1898-1977) who often expresses the transience of things. Does so through a battered windmill in the snow. The painter Peter van den Braken (1896-1979) is well represented. This often travelling 'painting sculptor' also appeared to find enough nourishment for his creative interpretations in the snowy Brabant countryside. By Walter Neuhof (1904-1982), there is an extraordinary work of a river valley in South Limburg, in which winter romanticism still appears to exist in the 20th century. Also on show are works by more Brabant painters from the last century such as by: Adrianus Sibens, Teun Gijssen, Louis Ector, Jacques Mels, Jos Leurs, Maria Kruysen, Jan Kruysen.