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Hubert Roestenburg Expressionist Nude
His portraits and nudes are an explosion of color and movement. Although the critics see Hubert Roestenburg as part of the German Expressionist movement, there are also traced influences of Cobra and van Gogh. With that said, it remains difficult to place him in a particular box.
When it comes to describing or categorizing his work or method of working even Hubert Roestenburg himself seems at a loss. ” There exists no concept or recipe for my art. Something happens to me that I have to put on the canvas. It is unpredictable. I am very sensitive to radiation and that expresses itself like an explosion. I do not control painting, painting controls me”.
“New Wild” (“Neue Wilde”) or Expressionist?
“Expressionism is to the eye what the scream is to the ear,” wrote the french art historian Pierre Courthion. Hubert Roestenburg has painted such screams in resounding and sometimes horrifying proximity. As if he were a weapon in the battle with his own passions and his own disintegration; his palette-knife maltreats his canvas again and again. In this way tremendous color chords are created, so immediate and heartbreakingly that the beholder is tempted to seek protection from the impact of the emotions.
No wonder that the Munich art critics racked their brain at the time to decide whether the Dutchman wasn’t more of a “new Wild” (“neue Wilde”) artist than an Expressionist.
‘in modern art Roestenburg may be seen as a prophet’
was said in 1992 by P.J. van den Akker art Critic for DIE ZEIT in Germany. “He represents the unadulterated expressive, exhilarating “manifestation of self” that characterizes the artist of our times”.
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