Theo Niermeijer - Collage: Plastic randje met verf spetters - 1964 - Sold

Collage by Theo Niermeijer. Plastic rim with paint splatter, fastened with two staples. Year: 1964. Dimensions top: H24 x W32cm. Dimensions of the presentation: H4 x w32cm. The work is not signed.
Provenance: This work comes from a folder, from the artist's personal archive.

Shipping: Our shipping days are Tuesday and Thursday.


Theo Niermeijer was a decisive man and an avid traveller. He followed various artist training courses in Amsterdam, Antwerp and Warsaw and traveled through North Africa, Iceland, the United States and the Middle and Far East. In particular, influences from the Far East can be found in Niermeijer's work.

One of his studios was located in the Amsterdam district of Zeeburg, at a location where a lot will change in the coming years: the polluted area next to the new IJburg. An enormous piece of land with sheds, cars in various states of decomposition, trucks and caravans. Hundreds of his sculptures stood inside and out, among wrecks and nettles, leaning against trees and walls.

Images from an earlier period (totem poles, made up of horizontal ovals, with moon and sun signs, spirals, hearts and mask-like faces) stood here brotherly next to his new, more abstract images. Niermeijer called himself 'the poet of scrap'. He found the material for his sculptures in shipyards, among other places, where he collected the remains of metal cutting machines.

Through his travels to India, Tibet and China he fell under the spell of ancient Chinese and Buddhist philosophy. Traces of this can be found in his works on paper and in his plastics. He immersed himself in the ceremonies of Buddhism, the invocation of the gods. "It's a kind of incantation, an exorcism, the invocation of protection." Niermeijer made huge 'blow-ups' of tantras and mandalas.

The most important source of inspiration for Niermeijer was the artist Shinkichi Tajiri. Despite their difference in working method. Niermeijer worked at random, randomly and arbitrarily, without fixed rhyme and meter. He had a relationship with the thought world of Zen Buddhism in that one is aided by an “invisible hand that stops thinking and helps you create from the infinite sea of creative possibilities. It is absolutely necessary that you work a lot, preferably every day to keep that flow going and to control your eyes and hands,” says Niermeijer. Hakuin's Home is a tribute to Hakuin Ekaku, an ancient Japanese Zen master who lived from 1686 to 1769.