Corrie de Boer Dutch, 1932-2023

Corrie de Boer (*1932) lives and works in Amsterdam. She studies at the textile design department at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and in the early nineteen-seventies becomes known for her reliefs made of snow-white linen. Horizontal and vertical pleats provide a tension that is sometimes released into diagonals, squares or circles. Although the work appears to be very simple, as if its creation is effortless, Corrie de Boer always works from a previous sketch. She sometimes sits for days thinking and calculating about one of these sketches. Actually making the work is a huge task, nevertheless embroidering in straight lines for hours on end is a necessary part of her artistry. As de Boer says with regard to her reliefs and textile works: 'I have a sort of love-hate relationship with textiles. On the one hand I love the material and it fascinates me, on the other hand I'm opposed to it as a visual material because its special qualities, stemming from its function, often have a significance of their own. For years I have been engaged in the process of organising the chaos in it or abstracting the reality. The choice of church linen reduces the material to a minimum so that I can use it to construct a personal image. For me this image arises from the theme 'tree' (vertical) and 'landscape' (horizontal). The two central ideas of vertical and horizontal have become visual definitions for the white reliefs. Three different categories have developed, which nevertheless have a surprising amount in common, particularly structure, geometry and the anecdotal (reminiscences of tree or landscape).'

In the early eighties Corrie de Boer turns to drawing. The purchase of an unusual elliptical stone from India, the lingam, the symbol in India for the universe and the erotic, leads to the series of large works entitled "Lingam": oval forms composed of concentrated, restrained marks, applied in one intense and yet controlled movement. From the mid-eighties drawing forms the basis of her work. Sometimes on transparent paper, sometimes using existing cards and collages.

Corrie de Boer is constantly reorienting and this characterizes her work. She has many exhibitions both at home and abroad to her name and her work is in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst in The Hague and the Nederlands Textielmuseum, Tilburg, among others.