Rob Scholte - Peace of Münster - Sold

Silkscreen by Rob Scholte. "Peace of Munster" (2000)
Edition may differ from photos.
Rob Scholte doesn't want to be an artist who engages in deeply felt, highly personal expression in the isolation of his studio. In his view, art must convey a message. His art has the visual power of a billboard along a highway. It's directly appealing, yet the opposite of superficial. His art is layered with personal interpretation, humor, intelligence, and expertise. And although his paintings may seem spontaneous, nothing could be further from the truth.
Rob Scholte (Amsterdam, 1958)
Scholte lived in Castricum, Doorn, Heiloo, and Egmond aan den Hoef. From 1977 to 1982, he studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. He subsequently became a member of the artist collective W139, where he debuted with Sandra Derks in 1982 with the "masterpiece" Rom 87, a series of freestyle painted variations on a book of children's coloring pages. He replaced this style with meticulously painted works, which he began exhibiting in 1984 at The Living Room. Scholte's work was shown at Documenta in 1987, and in 1990, he was commissioned to design the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 1986, he caused a stir with a painted postcard, Utopia (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen). When pointed out that this was a quotation from Manet's Olympia, Scholte responded with a painting that supposedly reproduced the newspaper article with this criticism and image; a literal quotation of half a newspaper page. With How to Star, a solo exhibition at Boijmans Van Beuningen, featuring paintings from 1983-1988, Scholte received both praise and criticism. In 1991, he met the model, also soap opera and film star, Micky Hoogendijk. She became the director of his company, and on May 31, 1994, they married at the house temple RoXY. In 1993, Scholte became a lecturer at the Kassel Art Academy, a position he resigned from in 1999. In 1991, Rob Scholte BV won the commission for a 1200-square-meter wall and ceiling painting for the Huis Ten Bosch Resort in Nagasaki, Japan. Scholte worked with a large number of assistants on the painting, titled "Après nous le déluge," about the constant repetition of war in history. Its opening was scheduled for August 9, 1995, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, but had to be postponed due to an attack on Scholte. Scholte is an image-maker. He organizes and places images—from the mass media, from his own extensive archive—in a new context, thereby imbuing them with new meaning. His work often presents contradictions and oppositions that are "overcome" in their new context. His meticulously painted works are usually produced by assistants and signed by himself. In this way, he follows a 17th-century working method. His method is illustrative of postmodernism and emphasizes the constant influx of images that surround, shape, and mold us. The theme is always the media; he draws inspiration from it, criticizes its manipulation and also acts as a 'media personality' himself.