03 january 2025, Flor Linckens
The understated abstractions of Ben Akkerman
Until 31 January 2025, BorzoGallery in Amsterdam presents a carefully curated exhibition showcasing the understated work of Ben Akkerman (1920-2010). Titled 'Ben Akkerman: Paintings and Drawings 1935-2008', the gallery offers a rare glimpse into the oeuvre of an artist who worked uncompromisingly and left behind a small yet powerful body of work.
Ben Akkerman was born on 29 February 1920, a leap day, in Enschede. As a teenager, he discovered his passion for painting, a pursuit he practised as a self-taught artist while working as a municipal employee. It was not until his retirement in 1982 that he could fully devote himself to his art, though his practice had already gained a professional and serious dimension by the 1950s.
Akkerman’s artistic career began with faithful depictions of the Twente countryside, capturing the fields, watermills, and farmhouses in his surroundings. He drew inspiration from the works of 17th-century masters such as Jan van Goyen and Jacob van Ruisdael, whose paintings he admired at Rijksmuseum Twenthe. Yet Akkerman was not striving for a literal representation of the landscape. As he once stated in a wall text at the Van Abbemuseum: “I didn't want any reminder in my work of a windy day or a rainy afternoon. I wanted to make a new image.” Instead, his focus was on the structure and atmosphere of the landscape — a theme he would never abandon, even as his work gradually became more abstract from the 1950s onwards.
The true shift towards abstraction occurred in 1973, the year of his first solo museum exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Recognisable elements of the landscape gave way to lines, planes and colours, through which Akkerman sought to capture the essence of light, space and atmosphere. By this point, the landscape had become a faint echo within his work.
Although Akkerman’s art is often associated with fundamental painting, NUL/Zero, and minimal art, he always remained an outsider. His inspiration came not from defined movements, but rather from nature and the act of painting itself. Nevertheless, in 1946, he co-founded the artists’ collective De Nieuwe Groep ('The New Group'), which aimed to promote modern art from the eastern part of the Netherlands.
Akkerman’s output was remarkably low: he completed only five to six paintings each year, often after months of painstaking revisions, sanding and repainting — a testament to his almost ascetic dedication. Each painting represents a meticulous search for balance, where paint, colour and form harmonise seamlessly. At the same time, small imperfections render his work approachable and human. Not every painting survived his stringent self-criticism; many were destroyed if they failed to meet his exacting standards. What remains is an oeuvre of approximately 150 paintings and hundreds of drawings, much of which is now housed in museum collections. For instance, Kunstmuseum Den Haag holds no fewer than 167 of his works, while Rijksmuseum Twenthe owns nearly 80.
Bas de Bruijn and Paul van Rosmalen of BorzoGallery have long admired Akkerman’s work. Five years ago, this admiration deepened when the gallery acquired one of his paintings. “That’s quite extraordinary,” Paul van Rosmalen explained in Residence Magazine. “Akkerman’s works are scarce. His oeuvre is small and it rarely comes onto the market. Moreover, much of it is held in museum collections, both in the Netherlands and abroad. We decided not to sell that piece but to keep it for ourselves, marking the beginning of our Akkerman collection.” Bas de Bruijn added: “Later, we had the opportunity to acquire a carefully curated collection of his paintings and drawings, which we embraced wholeheartedly.”
The exhibition at BorzoGallery traces Akkerman’s development from early landscapes to his later abstract compositions. His non-figurative paintings, often created on square or diamond-shaped panels without frames, frequently display subtle reliefs. These textured surfaces, the result of extensive layering, sanding and repainting, imbue his works with a sculptural quality. Akkerman often painted the edges of the canvas as well. Using countless translucent layers of acrylic paint — best appreciated up close — he crafted restrained palettes, ranging from greys and sandy tones to more vibrant shades of blue, green and ochre. Yet his work remains defined by a visual sobriety that avoids excess.
Ben Akkerman passed away on 2 February 2010 at the age of 89. His works are held in the collections of various museums, including Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Museum Of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum Voorlinden, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the Van Abbemuseum, the Fries Museum, the Groninger Museum, the Centraal Museum, the Bonnefantenmuseum, the Frans Hals Museum and Rijksmuseum Twenthe.
