1: Otto B. de Kat, Self-portrait, 1955, Museum Maassluis, 2: Otto B. de Kat, The Open Window (La Grand Pressigny), 1982, Van der Pant Fine Art. 3: Jeanne Bieruma Oosting, Interior with Chair, 1972, Museum Maassluis

The exhibition Otto B. de Kat and contemporaries—Jeanne Bieruma Oosting, Wim Oepts, Kees Verwey, and others— provides an overview of the highlights of De Kat's oeuvre. A selection of works by contemporaries who also attempted to capture 'the soul of things' places his oeuvre in a broader perspective. Paintings by artists such as Jeanne Bieruma Oosting, Johan Buning, and Kees Verwey show that although De Kat had his own unique identity, he was also part of a larger movement. While the Dutch avant-gardists were in a permanent state of revolution, the work of De Kat and his followers formed an equally strong and constant undercurrent. Regardless of time and place, this art possesses a universal eloquence that continues to inspire and move contemporary viewers.

Deep-rooted inspiration

"He can wait," is how art historian Hans Jaffé described the Haarlem painter Otto B. de Kat (1907-1995) in 1972. Unlike the Impressionists and Expressionists, who worked quickly and spontaneously, De Kat continued to weigh things up until he had captured the essence of what he saw around him on his canvas. He was not interested in unusual or spectacular things. Instead, he painted subjects with which he felt deeply connected through everyday interaction: a set table, an interior with an armchair, the view of a polder in North Holland, or a hilly landscape in the Auvergne. De Kats' paintings do not show a fleeting impression or emotional reaction, but a world of deep-rooted inspiration that seems timeless. It is precisely this timeless atmosphere that continues to attract a large and growing circle of admirers. In an increasingly hectic and uncertain society, De Kats' painting is a welcome beacon of steadfastness.

Otto B. the Cat

Otto B. de Kat studied at the Art Academy in Haarlem and the National Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam. In the late 1920s, he went to Paris to immerse himself in modernism, without completely surrendering to it. From the outset, De Kat proved himself to be a thoughtful artist who allowed himself to be influenced only by developments that appealed to him. His stay in Uccle, a small town in Belgium near Brussels, from 1937 to 1940, marked his need to find his own way in anonymity. He processed impressions from his immediate surroundings or during his travels in the privacy of his studio, creating layered paintings in muted, often familiar colors. He ignored the post-war "wild painting" of Cobra, as well as the informal and conceptual art that followed. His role models were French masters such as Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Albert Marquet, and later Nicolas de Staël. Commuting between Amsterdam and his second home in France, De Kat built up an oeuvre that steadily developed into a close synthesis of the French and Dutch schools. The atmospheric polders he painted near Beemster at the end of his life are among his best works.

Catalog Sunk Inspiration -

Otto B. de Kat and contemporaries

Available for purchase in the museum shop or online via Waanders Publishers. Author: Feico Hoekstra.

€23,95