Jan Beutener in Museum MORE

“Gentleman seen from the rear” (1972) by Dutch artist Jan Beutener.

Museum MORE (an acronym for MOdern REalism) (@museummore) pays tribute to the career of Jan Beutener with this almost extensive overview of 70 works. Having created graphic art in the CoBrA-style first, at the end of the sixties Beutener changed to painting realism. This wasn’t an obvious choice. The art of painting was by that time considered to be outdated and redundant, with artist experimenting heavily with new media such as installations, photography, video and performance.

The way in which Beutener accentuates or crops a detail in a scene gets the viewer’s immediate attention. Making the realistic depictions almost always slightly humourous.

This work (oil on canvas) was on loan from the Stedelijk Museum (@stedelijkmuseum) in Amsterdam.

By the way: given the average age of the visitors in Museum MORE on this particular Wednesday, it didn’t take a lot of patience to match this scene…