Herman van den Boom - MORTE NATURE 1994

Still life, 1994
Mixed media (oil pastel and paint) on paper, approx. 50 × 70 cm. Signed and dated '94 in the lower right corner. With passe-partout 70x90cm. Titled at the bottom. A pot full of blooms, planted in white. From an orange bowl, in which a blue-red heart beats, flowers rise like flags: purplish-red with golden veins, yellow like summer light, supported by stems of rosehip green and fiery red. Leaves unfold like hands. At the bottom, a yellow sun rolls past, half wheel, half glow. Everything is cut out, outlined with black charcoal, and accentuated with color that hesitates nowhere. The paper leaves space, like breath between two sentences. Nature morte, literally dead nature, is what the maker calls this work, and the image contradicts the title convincingly: nothing stands still here. Everything glows, beats, and grows. Herman van den Boom is a Dutch/Belgian artist who works with photography and collage. His work explores the boundaries between observation and imagination and often combines documentary precision with playful abstraction. Van den Boom's photographs and collages have been exhibited internationally and are held in important collections such as the Rijksmuseum, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.