Theo Wolvecamp

from ART CATALOGUE // COBRA - The Colour of Freedom

Jan Nieuwenhuijs

When he was only 23, Theo Wolvecamp’s artistic career was off to an explosive start, when he joined the Experimental Group in 1948. The destitute young painter from the Twente region, in the east of the Netherlands, was discovered in Amsterdam by Corneille, who in turn introduced him to Appel and Constant. Wolvecamp had known an impoverished youth in the city of Hengelo and had enjoyed little schooling. When not wandering through the woods, he studied reproductions in magazines in libraries or was busy drawing. With the exception of two years at the art academy in Arnhem, which he considered mere ballast, he developed his work on his own initiative, using Kandinsky’s abstractions as a point of departure. Wolvecamp is referred to as the ‘silent strength behind CoBrA’ because of the consistency of his work and his loyalty to the CoBrA roots. That loyalty concerned the artistic principles of experimentation and improvization, for he was less able to muster affinity for radical theoretical formulas. In his younger years, he shortened his name to the more lighthearted and international sounding Wolvé. In 1953, his effort to further develop his work in Paris with the help of a study grant came to naught – he was miserable there. Wolvecamp proved unable to work without the familiar décor of his youth, and he moved back to Hengelo permanently in 1954, where he was taken into the circle of art collectors Alice and Hans de Jong. Wolvecamp’s paintings were at times produced with difficulty. He was famous for his severe criticism of his own work, a considerable percentage of which was painted over, if not altogether destroyed. Wolvecamp also shunned publicity, feeling more comfortable in the shadows of the art world. [MdG]

Composition with White Spot

1955 oil on jute 101.2 x 99.9 cm S/66 purchased from Theo Wolvecamp 1955

For this robust composition, Wolvecamp used raw jute. Against a dark background, a broad mesh of horizontal and vertical lines was applied with wide, strong strokes in muddy white. In the middle of the canvas, one discovers a bright red accent, and a little above that, a wide green stroke. A black stick figure in supple lines meanders across the canvas like a ball of twine. The paint has been squeezed directly from the tube and worked with the back of a brush or pallet knife. Wolvecamp here demonstrates his not-insignificant ability as a material painter, but he was not merely concerned with purely formal issues. In an interview in 1955, the year this painting was made, he said:

‘Starting with the material, I try to arrive at an expression of life in the form of a painting, which is not just a brew of colour and lines, but in which a spontaneous human sentiment conquers the material and every aesthetic concept.’

In this context, the titles that Wolvecamp gave his paintings are significant. A 1954 painting that related to the Schiedam composition was entitled Souvenir de Bretagne. It is a heavy, somber work that reflects Wolvecamp’s disillusioned frame of mind during his stay in France. The fact that in retrospect, by the 1980s, Wolvecamp would be known as a pioneer amongst the informal artists failed to make an impression on him. [MdG]

Night Birds

1958 oil on canvas 120.1 x 110.4 cm BS/329 on loan from the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN)

Despite the title, Night Birds, it is evident in this painting that Wolvecamp was not concerned about any easily identified representation. As was often the case, this painting does not reveal its secrets at a single glance. From the volume of paint loom forms that could might be associated with ‘night birds’. On looking again, the colour planes, which seem surrounded by black contours, will not be forced into a specific form. They drift and float away, and can at best only barely be contained by a network of fat, black lines. It is a battle taking place in paint, and the intensity of the work is further increased by the contrast between the glowing colours and the deep black. This dynamic is reminiscent of the work of the action painters, such as Pollock and De Kooning, whom Wolvecamp particularly admired. Compared with the ‘hard core’ Dutch CoBrA artists, Appel, Corneille and Constant, Wolvecamp’s oeuvre is remarkably compact and thematically consistent. In 1992, not long before he died, the then 67-year-old painter again picked up the night birds theme, in a thickly painted canvas, with less movement than the Schiedam painting, but it still remains loyal to the CoBrA idiom. [MdG]