Oil on board. 1959. Dimensions image approx 60*49 cm, frame approx 55*66 cm. Signed b.r. 1959.
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Biography
Willy Boers was born in Amsterdam in 1905. From 1925 he worked as a restorer and in 1928 he began working as an artist. Initially, he creates landscapes and still lifes in which he tries to reproduce reality precisely. In 1936, Boers visited an exhibition Hommage a Cézanne in Paris. Boers sees Cézanne as the founder of the
abstract art. World War II was a turning point for Boers. After the war, he focused entirely on abstract art. Because of the war, he no longer wanted to continue, as he himself said, “depicting the external forms of the outside world.” Realism was accepted by the occupying forces; abstract art was seen as entartet (and was therefore associated with freedom by many artists). Because Boers was not affiliated with the Kultuurkamer, he could not participate in exhibitions during the period 1942-1945.
In 1947, Boers was involved in the founding of the artists’ organization Vrij Beelden. The manifesto issued by the group in 1947 states that the name Vrij Beelden refers to the unfree position of art during the war, it also seeks total freedom of expression and resistance to the conventions of realism. In 1950, a breakaway took place under the leadership of Boers and Ger Gerrits under the name Creatie, a society that was one of the first groups after 1945, to focus entirely on absolute art. Absolute art Absolute art, also called concrete art, is art without any connection to reality. Absolute art limits itself to its own means, abstract painting must retain the character of the plane and consist only of colors and lines. Adolf Holzel is considered the founder of absolute art. Boers came to complete abstractions during the time of Creation, he does not refer to the visible world in his work and brings about expression only with color. In 1954, Creation was dissolved.
Boers will not become a member of an art society after Creation’s dissolution. In the 1959 painting Looking Backward, we do clearly see the influence of the artists of the Informal group (founding year 1959).
Absolute painting is a term coined by Adolf Hölzel, this art focuses exclusively on the means that make up a painting. Each sculpture, according to Adolf Hölzel, is exclusively an abstract structure of lines, shapes and colors.
