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Lot Essay
Around 1925 Wim Schuhmacher executed the first of the later famous (magic) realistic canvases, carefully composed with light grey colours and sharp outlines. Before that period his work can be situated in the tradition of the so-called cubo-expressionism of the Bergense School, in which the expressive violence of colour and cubist design were the central factors.
Rediscovering the works of the early renaissance artists, the fifteenth century Dutch artists and, moreover, Giotto, made him change his ideas on art. Above all his landscapes reflect a radically new notion of space. In representing the setting he did not leave out any details but, however, he did not add any either. The very precise total images have little to do with reality though. By means of a series of manipulations he did not just copy the visual world around him. In well-considered compositions, the grey colorite and the shadowless light bring unity into the multitude. Background and foreground have been represented with the same kind of sharpness, without using atmospheric perspective. The strong lines suggest stillness and contemplation. Not without reason Just Havelaar already wrote in 1928 about these compositions: "De geest der Gothiek keert weer". However, exact reproduction of nature was never his goal, but a mere medium: by using reality as a detour, he tried to reach the 'absolute'.
The silver grey colours Schuhmacher applied in the 1930's made him famous in Holland. It was also called the 'noble colour of grey' or 'the colour of the inner side of a shell'. The grey was connected by R.H. Dijkstra in 1934 with the absence of time in Schuhmacher's work: "Over een landschap van Schuhmacher gaat de zon niet op of onder, het ligt van den tijd vergeten." (Van Geest, op cit. 1991)
See colour illustration
Rediscovering the works of the early renaissance artists, the fifteenth century Dutch artists and, moreover, Giotto, made him change his ideas on art. Above all his landscapes reflect a radically new notion of space. In representing the setting he did not leave out any details but, however, he did not add any either. The very precise total images have little to do with reality though. By means of a series of manipulations he did not just copy the visual world around him. In well-considered compositions, the grey colorite and the shadowless light bring unity into the multitude. Background and foreground have been represented with the same kind of sharpness, without using atmospheric perspective. The strong lines suggest stillness and contemplation. Not without reason Just Havelaar already wrote in 1928 about these compositions: "De geest der Gothiek keert weer". However, exact reproduction of nature was never his goal, but a mere medium: by using reality as a detour, he tried to reach the 'absolute'.
The silver grey colours Schuhmacher applied in the 1930's made him famous in Holland. It was also called the 'noble colour of grey' or 'the colour of the inner side of a shell'. The grey was connected by R.H. Dijkstra in 1934 with the absence of time in Schuhmacher's work: "Over een landschap van Schuhmacher gaat de zon niet op of onder, het ligt van den tijd vergeten." (Van Geest, op cit. 1991)
See colour illustration