L a s t  E x h i b i t i o n

- with Peter Royen & John David -

13th March to 16th May 2008

'Exhibition Peter Royen'

Painting

The Painter of Silence

Peter Royen, born 1923 in Amsterdam, is a true personality. For almost sixty years his energy, sensitivity and effort has gone into art. From the beginning, he strongly advocated 'freedom for art' and 'respect for the artist'. He has always supported and encouraged young artists from Düsseldorf, where the eighty-four year old has lived since 1946.

White is the dominating colour in Royen's work: white, often in contrast to deep black or yellow squares. He builds pictures of many-layered tiles which rise up, radiating a deep silence through the reduction of colours.

The well-known art critic, Werner Schmalenbach, about Royen: Of course he is, as you can see in each of his paintings, extraordinarily sensitive. But sensitivity is not really more than a raw material.   It is important what comes out of it. Peter Royen is making 'out of it' his silent, poetic, quietly breathing paintings - between the two poles of the strict order of the picture and the freedom of painting. He is a painter of the silence.

'Goa
Chaos, Colour and Light'

Photography

He is a lover of India and spent many years living there. Besides photography, painting is a reflection of his inner Self. His creativity has its source in the spontaneity and innocence of the moment.

The clash of the old catholic ex-portuguese colonial culture and the emerging modern cosmopolitan Hindi culture with a dash of global village and the remnants of the sixties hippy trail combine to give Goa, a small state on the seashore of Western India, a vibrant, colourful, chaotic atmosphere. The vastness of the sky and the power of the sun's rays drive the economy.

	These photographs capture the vibrancy, colour and exotic nature of the culture and the power of the natural light, which diffuses through the chaotic junglescape and paints vast panoramic skyscapes.