Slewe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Handmade with selected works by Jan Roeland, who passed away ten years ago. This exhibition presents two groups of paintings, most of which have not been shown before. One group, dating largely from the early part of his career, features tools, such as sickles, hammers and knives. In the other group, from his final period, a flower, a tulip, is isolated on the canvas or flanked by a bare branch or a square. The exhibition was realised in close collaboration with the Jan Roeland Foundation. A small catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition.
Jan Roeland (1935-2016) has built up an oeuvre of paintings which moves between geometric abstraction and figuration. Recognisable simple motifs of everyday objects, such as hammers, toy-aeroplanes, plants and ducks give his formally built-up abstract painting some sense of humour. His paintings are precisely constructed and built up with several layers of oil paint, in which colour plays an important role. The relatively small formats of his canvases fit in the old Dutch tradition of Easel-painting.
Roeland started exhibiting after his study in 1965 and since 1969 regularly at Galerie Espace. In 2001 he started showing at Slewe Gallery. He lived and worked in Amsterdam during his whole life and passed away at the age of 81 in 2016. His work has been collected by several museums, such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam and Schunck in Heerlen. In 1997 a comprehensive catalogue had been published, overviewing more than 25 years of his work, along a travelling exhibition of his work at the Beyerd in Breda, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam and Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede. In 2007 another catalog has been published along a solo show at the Stadsgalerij Heerlen. In 2010 he had an exhibition at the Hedge House in Wijlre, near Maastricht. After his death the Kunsthal Rotterdam made an overview of his work in 2017, followed by an exhibition in Stedelijk Museum Kampen in 2019. Recently, in 2024, Museum Kranenburgh in Bergen organised an exhibition of his paintings.