Frame: Hussem framed his paintings with aluminum strips. He preferred this slender profile to traditional frames, as they are less distracting and allow for a better interaction between the painting and the surrounding space.
Provenance: Galerie Nouvelles Images, Den Haag (inv.no. 4240) • Private collection
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Willem Frans Karel Hussem (1900–1974) was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. His artistic career began at a young age in 1917 and spanned a period of fifty-five years, during which he continuously renewed himself.
In his early years, Hussem worked in a strictly realistic style. This was characteristic of the period, when the rich international character of art had given way to a nationalist narrative with renewed appreciation for nature and craftsmanship. In this phase, Hussem was unable to achieve the same level of conviction as contemporaries such as Carel Willink, Pyke Koch, or Dick Ket.
From the 1940s onward, Hussem devoted himself fully to experimental painting. He developed his abstracting work at a time when the Dutch art world was still dominated by realism and traditionalism. As a result, he received little support or understanding, yet art from non-Western cultures and the work of Picasso continued to inspire him.
During the war years, Hussem’s output was limited, but Eastern calligraphy began to take hold in his artistic development. This stemmed from a strong interest in Zen Buddhism, which was also widespread in Western art. Hussem’s calligraphies and subsequent experimental paintings gradually received more favorable critical attention, but a Dutch market for avant-garde art still did not exist. This made life difficult for Hussem and his family.
At the end of the 1950s, Hussem developed a working method that would become characteristic of his practice—a style that aligned with his worldview and painterly convictions. It was marked by a powerful brushstroke and a controlled placement of lines, forms, and colors against a monochrome background. In the 1960s, he refined this approach further, entering a highly productive period of artistic maturity.
The expressive constructivist paintings he produced during this period are generally composed of strongly defined forms tending toward geometry, such as circles, ovals, ellipses, rectangles, beams, and arches.
Hussem’s mature visual language was highly personal and recognizable, yet his paintings could differ greatly in character—somber or joyful, restrained or exuberant and dynamic.
Hussem’s artistic practice can be characterized as a quest for the essential, the fundamental: “I have worked a lifetime to make my work as simple as possible. I must reclaim that simplicity from myself every time.” Hussem was associated with the art movements Fugare, the Liga Nieuw Beelden, and Verve. His work is considered part of the New Hague School. He received the Jacob Maris Prize three times, and his works are held in the collections of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Dordrechts Museum, and the Rijksmuseum Twente.
