Pedestrian Paintings: Andries Gouws Exhibits at The Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein South Africa

South Africa Tue 12-07-2011

Pedestrian Paintings: Andries Gouws Exhibits at The Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein South Africa
Press Release | Oliewenhuis Art Museum

Pedestrian Paintings (2006-2011), a travelling exhibition by well–known South African artist Andries Gouws, will be on show at Oliewenhuis Art Museum from 14 July to 14 August 2011.

Andries Gouws Feet. Pedestrian Paintings

Feet Painting by Andries Gouws

The exhibition will be opened at 19:00 on Thursday, 14 July 2011 by Dr Gerhard Schoeman, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art History and Visual Culture Studies, University of the Free State. The artist will conduct a walkabout of the exhibition at 10:00 on Friday, 15 July 2011.

The exhibition is a combination of the interiors and still life works known from Gouws’ previous shows, as well as a series of paintings of feet on which he has been working since 2006.

Writing in the SA Art Times, Steve Kretzmann comments that the subject matter Gouws has concentrated on over the years has always been rather surprising to him.

Living in Holland for 16 years after studying art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town, in Italy, Düsseldorf and finally Amsterdam, Gouws began painting “big, colourful, gestural abstract” paintings in acrylics before moving on to graphics.

Andries Gouws Nude Man

Andries Gouws' Nude Man

While in Holland he had pined for the South African landscape and climate. On his return to South Africa, having sold his treasured 500 kg Artel etching press and returned to oils, he imagined that he would paint the landscape and nudes, things which, according to Gouws “grabbed my gut most directly”.

But he ended up painting interiors and still lifes, unexpectedly connecting with a Dutch tradition that during his time in Holland he had felt he did not belong to.

Andries Gouws-Cloth

A cloth painting by Andries Gouws

Arguably, Gouws’ feet paintings remain in the tradition of interiors and still lifes, although with a twist that moves them onto a different level.

Gouws comments “these feet do not have the same meditative quality as my still lifes and interiors. They are more confrontational; engaging with feet disconcerts me – they look back at me in a way objects in a still life or interior don’t.”

Feet paintings by Andries Gouws

Gouws believes his earlier work “often suggested that Vermeer and Piero were the artists I had looked at closely”. The current paintings “suggest other triggers: El Greco; Grünewald, Caravaggio even”.

For his wife, the novelist and artist Ingrid Winterbach, his paintings of feet have a “Baroque religiosity”. Although Gouws is a non-believer, the echoes of Baroque religious painting his interpretation of feet is not surprising, considering his appreciation of Velasquez and Rubens.

For more information on Pedestrian Paintings please contact:

Karen Marais,
Exhibition Officer,
Tel : +27 (0) 51 447 9609
Fax : +27 (0) 51 447 6273
karen.marais@nasmus.co.za
www.nasmus.co.za

Posted By: Allan Kapten

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