Theo Koster

Theo Koster (Emmeloord, Netherlands, 1952) studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Arnhem. Even then, his paintings were landscape-oriented, albeit more subdued than his more recent work, and he developed his own visual language, which he continues to use and expand to this day. A defining feature of his work is the division of the picture plane: vast skies above land or water with a low horizon, and his use of bright colors is contemporary. His sense of the right color choices and his dynamic application of paint create a specific atmosphere in each individual painting. He also employs graphic and collage techniques. His playful and narrative paintings exude a sense of calm, resulting in a compositional balance that emerges almost naturally. In his canvases, he explores a theme that preoccupies us all: the meaning of human existence. During this process, he draws connections to his own life and personal commitment, employing a symbolic visual language. The palette knife and the brush are his tools, and the white canvas is, in principle, the challenge—that is where it all happens. For some 40 years now, with ever-increasing use of color and material, this has led to a painted poem.

After attending the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Academy of Fine Arts in Arnhem, he lived for a year in an abandoned mountain village in the Ardèche region of France. Landscape was an early starting point in his paintings, and he absorbed plenty of it in that village above the L’Eyrieux valley. During this French period, his work consisted mainly of fully abstracted landscapes centered around recognizable impressions of the horizon, executed in a turbulent style with a limited color palette; today, there is much more going on in his work.