Ben Akkerman

 

Akkerman's oeuvre developed cautiously and resolutely in equal measure. Even in his teens, he drew and painted farms, watermills and landscapes. In the early 1960s, his figuration was characterized by clear lines, inspired once more by his love of the Twente landscape and architectonic structures. In the second half of the 1960s, the element of construction becomes dominant, with hardly any naturalism remaining.

 

For Akkerman, the year 1973 marked his transition to radical abstraction. It was, moreover, the year of new contacts, opportunities and his association with an impressive international context. Director Edy de Wilde of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, artist-friend Jan Dibbets and Geert van Beijeren of the Amsterdam gallery Art & Project played key roles in this. The year 1973 began well, with a solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum. In the following years, Akkerman was shown numerous times at Art & Project in the impressive context of John Baldessari, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Ryman.

 

Works by Ben Akkerman are included in the collections of, among others, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Kunstmuseum in The Hague, and Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede. His work has been awarded the Gerard ter Borch Prize from the province of Overijssel twice (1957, 1963), and he received the PC Kunstprijs in 1994. After retiring as a civil servant for the municipality of Enschede in 1982, he was a mentor at Haarlem's Ateliers '63 from 1984 to 1992.