Theo Kuijpers | Paintings and gouaches

"I don't explain," says Theo Kuijpers during my recent studio visit to Eindhoven. "I let people associate themselves. They know where I come from and where I have been ".

Theo Kuijpers comes from the Brabant country, son of a farming family from Mierlo. He fulfills his military service in Suriname. It gives him the opportunity to see more of South America and the Caribbean. Later in the 1960s he started to travel more, especially to Morocco.

The architecture, the landscape and the traces that people leave behind are sources of inspiration. In 1978 he meets the Dutch lithographer Fred Genis, who already printed lithographs in New York for, among others, Rauschenberg and De Kooning. Genis, now living in Australia, invites Theo Kuijpers to visit him and get to know the nature and culture of that country. In that year he leaves for the first time to Australia with a travel grant; he will return there several times. The art and culture of the Aborigines touches him

very much.

Traces in the landscape, architecture of the people and materials from nature: these are the ingredients with which Kuijpers composes his paintings. He rarely works on the spot; he takes all impressions back to his studio. With those memories he can go for years. Controlled and matured emotion, subject to the discipline of the studio. He only works on one painting at a time. When that is finished he can continue.

His exhibition in Museum De Pont in Tilburg, now a year ago, was an excellent reason to visit Theo again in his Eindhoven studio. We are now happy to show the result in the gallery on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam.

Paul van Rosmalen