Interview Officina do Pensamento [part II]

How Amsterdam has influence in your themes?
I learned that it is of great importance to make images of the things that you know best, things that surround you. I also learned that it is important to choose the simple things. The other things are more subject for litterature or whatever, but not for painting.
If one takes a look at the works of great artists like Picasso, Braque, Morandi, Bonnard, name them all, you’ll notice that their subjects, their starting points in their work, are the things of which they are surrounded.
I was born in Amsterdam, I live in that city (although I also have built a house 
in Paramaribo, Suriname, because I like a tropical climate) and it is no surprise
that I like to paint the canals with the boats.


end of summer, olie/linnen, 120 x 140 cm

Who are the masters you admire and why?
I like the work of the dutch painter Karel Appel because of his energy, his skills
of keeping the colours so clean, the texture of his painting and the sense of the forces of nature in his paintings.
I like George Breitner, who is an impressionist, very well known in Holland, but
in Holland only, who made tremendous paintings of Amsterdam. I like the french painter Eugene Leroy because of his patience, the skin of his paintings and
his integrity. I like the delicate works of Pierre Bonnard because it is hard to resist him. I mean, everybody likes him, with the possible exception of Picasso.
I like, of course, Claude Monet. He understood how to combine colours to create the world he shaped in his garden. It seems obviously, but there always remain
a mysterie in his work. He knew how to paint light and did it in a light way. Everything is vibrating in his paintings and it is a pity that he almost became too popular, so people only know his work in reproductions. The brilliance of his colours is much richer than shown on your calendar.
Of course there are many more painters I admire ( Willem de Kooning, Morandi, Baselitz, van Gogh, Goya, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Titian, Delacroix, Zurbaran
and many, many more….)

Heartfelt thanks to Paula Valéria de Andrade, jornalista & escritora, for this interview

Bernard de Wolff (1 November 1955 in Amsterdam)
is a Dutch painter of contemporary cityscapes, cows, landscapes and nudes.
His work is represented in art collections in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Denmark, the United States, Suriname, China, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Russia and Brazil.

info@nostrolunedi.it
www.nostrolunedi.it

info
info@liricigreci.it
www.liricigreci.it