Eugène Brands - Gouache - white table - 1973, signed on verso - Sold

In 1946, Eugène Brands participated in the group exhibition Young Painters at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam,[1] where an entire room was filled with his work. There he established good contacts with director Sandberg, who had promised him a (solo) exhibition.

When he joined the Experimental Group in Holland in 1948, he took on the task of managing contacts with the Stedelijk Museum. This led to the International Exhibition of Experimental Art in November 1949. Meanwhile, the Cobra movement had also been founded by Constant Nieuwenhuijs, Corneille, Karel Appel, Christian Dotremont, and Asger Jorn. Consequently, this large group exhibition was the first public manifestation of Cobra. A number of large works by Eugène Brands, created especially for the exhibition, were on display.
Due to disagreements and internal conflicts following this exhibition, he left the Cobra movement and distanced himself from it. He also went his own way artistically.[2] In the 1950s, he created work inspired by children's drawings, including those of his daughter Eugénie.[3] It was not until the 1960s that he returned to the Cobra colour palette.
Besides paintings, Brands also created assemblages, in which he applied the same abstraction and color palette as in his paintings. In 2012, two collections of experimental poems and stories from his posthumous work were published.
The group exhibition organized by Sandberg in 1962 ultimately marked Eugène Brands' breakthrough. He no longer had to live off the reciprocal arrangement.
From 1967, he taught at the Royal Academy of Art and Design in 's-Hertogenbosch. From 1973, he worked in Nunspeet during the summers; later, he also had a studio in Provence.