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Ten years ago a long search started after buying a large unsigned pastel painting at an Amsterdam auction. It was labeled ‘unknown 20th century’. It turned out to be the Belgian artist Georges Robèr (1893-1969). Who, after the Siege of Antwerp in 1914, fled to Rotterdam where he joined the artist group De Banding (1917-1926). Van Deurzen is fascinated by this group. This avant-garde group’s interest in theosophy and anthroposophy attracts him, using abstract forms and colors, they depicted mystical phenomena behind visible reality. In the late 1950’s and 1960’s Robèr made dozens of collages, both black-and-white and colourful. Due to his reclusive existence from 1930 onwards, these received little publicity and thus remained disregarded.
Van Deurzen, whose visual work has similarities with Robèr’s, became fascinated by the latter’s
oeuvre and went in search of all available documentation. It did not stop at research. Over the years,
Van Deurzen also collected paintings and collages by Robèr, some of which can be seen here alongside
those from the Verbeke Foundation’s collection.
Here, Van Deurzen painted the walls in his own typical organic handwriting. Shapes from Robèr’s earlier work loom up in them, as well as his own archetypical forms such as pawn as sphere.