Eugène Brands - Screen Printing, Abstract Composition

Eugène Brands was born on January 15, 1913 in Amsterdam. From 1931 to 1934 he trained at the Amsterdam Applied Arts School in advertising design. After working for several months as an advertising designer at various agencies, he chose to become a visual artist. As such he is self-taught. In 1948 he became a member of the Dutch Experimental group REFLEX, which later, for a number of artists, resulted in CoBrA. His meeting with Willem Sandberg, former director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, led to the exhibition in which CoBrA presented itself for the first time in the Netherlands in 1949. Brands left CoBrA a year after its founding in 1949 to retire to his studio over the next 10 years and be inspired by 'the world of the child'. He discovers a special technique for this, namely oil paint on paper. Since 1967 he has been a teacher of Free Painting at the Royal Academy of Modern Art and Design in 's-Hertogenbosch. Brands has had numerous one-man exhibitions at home and abroad. Important retrospective exhibitions were in 1969 in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in 1988 in the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, in 1990 in the Beyerd in Breda, and in 1997 and 2001 in the CoBrA Museum of Modern Art in Amstelveen. Eugène Brands lived and worked in Amsterdam until he moved into a summer residence in Nunspeet on the Hoge Veluwe in 1974. There in the silence of nature he feels the mystery of the cosmos more strongly than ever. The mystery lies hidden for him in the beauty, the colors of crocuses and violets as well as the reflection of the pond in the garden. In 1993 Brands decided to stop painting on canvas. It has become too physically demanding for him. After that time he limited himself to his beloved gouaches on paper, because the technique of gouache lends itself best to the freedom he wants to achieve. In 1999 he exchanged his studio in Nunspeet for a studio in the South of France, which he unfortunately only enjoyed for a short time. Eugène Brands died at home on January 15, 2002, the day he celebrated his 89th birthday. Panta Rhei, his credo! The Panta Rhei, the 'everything flows', will always dominate his painting. Also in the years when he focused on the Mystery of the Universe, which gave rise to his masterly paintings such as 'Glorious Dawn at Venice' (1983) and 'Daybreak' (1986). These paintings are included in the collection of the Stedelijk Musseum in Amsterdam, where a large number of his works are housed.