Eugène Brands - gouage on cardboard - signed - 1982

Eugène Brands was born on 15 January 1913 in Amsterdam. From 1931 to 1934 he studied advertising design at the Amsterdam School of Arts and Crafts. After working for several months as an advertising designer at various agencies, he opted for visual artistry. As such, he was self-taught.

In 1948 he became a member of the Dutch Experimental group REFLEX, which later, as far as a number of artists were concerned, resulted in CoBrA. His meeting with Willem Sandberg, former director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, led to the exhibition in which CoBrA presented itself for the first time in the Netherlands in 1949. Brands left CoBrA a year after its foundation in 1949 to withdraw to his studio in the following 10 years and to be inspired by 'the world of the child'. He discovered a special technique for this, namely oil paint on paper.
Since 1967 he has been a teacher of Free Painting at the Royal Academy for Modern Art and Design in 's-Hertogenbosch. Brands has had numerous one-man exhibitions at home and abroad. Important retrospective exhibitions were in 1969 in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in 1988 in the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, in 1990 in the Beyerd in Breda, and in 1997 and 2001 in the CoBrA Museum for Modern Art in Amstelveen.
Eugène Brands lived and worked in Amsterdam, until he moved to a summer residence in Nunspeet on the Hoge Veluwe in 1974. There, in the silence of nature, he feels the mystery of the cosmos more strongly than ever. In the beauty, the colours of both crocuses and violets and the reflection of the pond in the garden, the mystery lies locked up for him.
In 1993 Brands decided to stop painting on canvas. It had become physically too heavy for him. After that time he limited himself to his beloved gouaches on paper, because the technique of gouache lends itself best to the freedom he wanted to achieve.
In 1999 he exchanged his studio in Nunspeet for a studio in the South of France, which he unfortunately only enjoyed for a short time. Eugène Brands died on January 15, 2002 in his home environment, the day he celebrated his 89th birthday.
Panta Rhei, his credo!
The Panta Rhei, the 'everything flows', will always dominate his painting. Also in the years when he focused on the Mystery of the Universe, which led to his masterful paintings such as 'Glorious Dawn at Venice' (1983) and 'Daybreak' (1986). These paintings are included in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where a large number of his works are housed.