Wim van Oostrom - Figure

Wim van Oostrom
Gouache/Acrylic on paper
Dimensions: 20 x 30 cm

Beautiful work in good condition, some discolouration of the paper (left side, see photo)

This work comes from the collection "Erven Eef de Weerd"

The work is in a small frame (without glass). In good condition

Wim van Oostrom was born on November 20, 1933 in Huissen as the youngest of five children.
He grew up in a Roman Catholic family that could make a good living from his father's shoemaking business. The house (now the city museum 'Hof van Hessen') was rented from the nuns of the Sint Elisabethklooster in Huissen, located behind the house. Wim was an altar boy there for a short time.
When Wim was 6 years old, the Second World War broke out. Although he himself never wanted to waste many words on it, the war undeniably plays a major role in his work. The flight from his birthplace Huissen in October 1944, the journey with his parents, brother and sisters along the evacuation addresses and especially the death of his father in a bombardment on Doetinchem on 21 March 1945, made an indelible impression on the boy. The then 11-year-old Wim himself narrowly escaped death in that bombardment. A chapter is devoted to this horrific event in 'Niet omkijken', the biography of Wim van Oostrom.
Life and work seem to be strongly connected in Wim van Oostrom. In both the sculptures and the paintings he made later as an artist, art critics initially recognized 'a world of fear and resistance, full of hate and tension'.

Artistry
Van Oostrom wanted to become a visual artist at a young age. However, this was not encouraged at home or at school, learning a decent trade and earning money, that was the credo.
Wim finished primary school in Hengelo, where the family had settled after the war. Wim then worked for several years as a house painter at the companies Engels and Ter Boo. But the artistic blood was thicker than water. Wim continued to stir creatively. When the opportunity arose to become an apprentice to visual artist Riemko Holtrop, he seized it with both hands.
Wim made his debut as a visual artist at a joint exhibition with Riemko Holtrop in January 1960 at Kunstcentrum Punt 31 in Dordrecht. The iron sculptures in particular were well received from the start. Piet Begeer wrote in Het Vrije Volk in 1960: “He is one of the many young people who play with the objet trouvé, the found thing.” Van Oostrom “welds these objects together into a composition, into an iron sculpture, into a symbolic sign, where the inspiring backgrounds usually escape the maker himself”.

Development
Wim van Oostrom experimented extensively with different materials. In Dagblad Tubantia (1977), reviewer Hans Hesse also noted this. Hesse finds it striking that technical perfection and unbridled fantasy are alternately expressed in different materials and techniques: “Copper sculptures, light objects, graphics, paintings, cartoons, aluminum reliefs and, over the years, the experiment with sound, photography, film and image”. Throughout his career (up to the present in 2019), Van Oostrom drew on his initial repertoire of forms in his work, to which new forms, elements and colors have been added over the years.

Group 130
Together with the Enschede artists Jan Bolink, Jan Dibbets and Wim Kamphuis, Wim van Oostrom founded Groep 130 in 1965. The partnership was set up out of dissatisfaction with the art policy at the time, which offered insufficient opportunities to work and exhibit. The aim was also to support each other and to gain more recognition for everyone's work.

Gallery De Pook
In the same year 1965, Wim van Oostrom and his wife Wies Hendriks started their own gallery in Hengelo, called 'De Pook'. De Pook was the first art gallery in Overijssel. The name refers to a stove poker, to stir up the prevailing cultural climate. The first exhibitor in the gallery was Aat Veldhoen with his controversial 'rotaprints'.