Robert Zandvliet is one of the foremost Dutch painters working today, whose work has been on the cusp of abstraction and representation since the early 1990’s. He examines the tension between self-reflective artistic practice and painting bound to a representational function. His pictures arise out of a movement between opposites, a symbiotic relationship between deliberate composition and chance occurrence, abstraction and figuration, part and whole, space and surface, and in which these elements are fused into polyphonic structures that re-envision the history of painting through his own lens. Oftentimes using landscape as a conceptual frame of reference, recognizable representations of a landscape become replaced by a gestural play of lines, colors, and surfaces that shift and merge foreground and background, reorienting the viewer’s perception of depth and surface.

Robert Zandvliet (b. Terband, Netherlands, 1970) lives and works in Haarlem, Netherlands. He received an MFA from De Ateliers, Amsterdam, Netherlands (1994). Solo exhibitions include Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands (2019); De Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands (2014, 2005, 1997); Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, Netherlands (2012); Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2005); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2001); Neues Kunstmuseum, Lucerne, Switzerland (2001); Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Strasbourg, France (2000).

Public collections include Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Strasbourg, France; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, Netherlands; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands; Museum de Pont, Tilburg, Netherlands; Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands. He is a recipient of the Prix de Rome (1994).