Theo Wolvecamp - litho: Abstracte compositie - 1987 - Sold

Lithograph by Theo Wolvecamp. Abstract composition. Year: 1987. Edition: 18/80. Dimensions representation: H27 x W39cm. Table size: H29.5 x W42 cm. The work is signed lower right by the artist. The authenticity of the work offered is fully guaranteed. A certificate of authenticity can be emailed upon request.


When purchasing, the work can be picked up in 's-Gravenzande (near The Hague (Scheveningen), Rotterdam and Delft and 10 minutes from the beach). The term for collection, with advance payment, is very long. In other words, the buyer can pick up the work weeks or even months later and, if possible, combine it with a visit to one of the aforementioned cities or the beach. We can also send the work via Postnl. Our shipping days are Tuesday and Thursday.

Theo Wilhelm Wolvecamp (Hengelo, 30 August 1925 - Amsterdam, 11 October 1992) was a painter and graphic artist who was part of the Cobra group for a number of years

Youth and education

His father was a tailor and died about 1934 when Wolvecamp was nine years old. During the war (1940-45) he started to paint in a refined cubist way and learned to draw in private lessons. In 1942 he painted for a short time with Eef de Weerd in the studio of Riemko Holtrop; both were working on a still life at the time. It was also Holtrop who brought them into contact with the older painters from the Goor area: Folkert Haanstra sr. and Jan Broeze. Wolvecamp educated himself in Hengelo by borrowing art books from the library, and thus became acquainted with the work of, among others, the Impressionists, De Bergense School painters, Jacoba van Heemskerck and Kandinsky; he also visited the museums in Amsterdam and came across works by the painters who would set up Cobra a few years later. From 1945 he attended the art academy in Arnhem, where he painted portraits, landscapes and still lifes; he only lasted a little under two and a half years. The Amsterdam painter Piet Landkroon helped him in 1947 to come to Amsterdam and work in a shared studio, where he often experimented at night. Corneille who lived nearby became curious about his work and after a visit to the studio he was very surprised.

Life and work

In Amsterdam, Wolvecamp soon became involved in the establishment of the Experimental Group in Holland and in the autumn of 1948 in the Cobra movement. In a short time he developed a spontaneous, abstract painting with free forms and lines, with which he directly connected with the experimental work of the other painters in Cobra, such as Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille and Anton Rooskens, who were immediately convinced by his work when they first saw the improvisations of 'that poor Twente painter'. Wolvecamp enthusiastically supported Cobra's objectives; his paintings, gouaches and drawings from that period are explosions of spontaneous abstractions, in which black, almost calligraphic lines wind around the yellow and blue spots that move in a light space. With the exhibition of Cobra in 1949 at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (then under the direction of Willem Sandberg) he decided to leave Cobra, but he quickly reversed his decision and briefly returned to it. Wolvecamp kept in touch with Appel, Constant and Corneille and took part in the exhibition in Liège in 1951. Little work from his Cobra years has been preserved because, dissatisfied with the result, he destroyed or painted over much of it.

From 1953 to 1954 Wolvecamp worked in Paris. He then returned to the relative isolation of his birthplace Hengelo. What had to be fought over by the local painters in Twente around those years had long since become history for Wolvecamp. This advance in development certainly explains his relatively aloof attitude there. It was thanks to the legendary collector-stocking manufacturer Hans de Jong (Jovanda) that the young painter escaped the proverbial black hole. De Jong offered him studio space and a mutually stimulating contact arose between Wolvecamp and the De Jong family. De Jong was one of the few collectors in Twente who had the opportunity to follow the development of modern art internationally. For Wolvecamp, who had gained experience with artist-kindred spirits in Denmark and France, among others, but did not have the means to keep those contacts alive, it was beneficial to be temporarily with De Jong. He remembered well how he put De Jong on the trail of Appel and Willem de Kooning, of the French painters Soulages and Dubuffet, of Wols and Yves Klein, and of course of the Danish artists of Cobra: 'I sometimes had to before he bought anything from these artists' .

Wolvecamp passed away at the age of 67. After his death, friends of Wolvecamp announced that a day before his cremation, more than one ton worth of art had been stolen from his house, including drawings that Wolvecamp had selected for a book