Robert Zandvliet: Paradaidha

Ter gelegenheid van de finissage gaat Robert Zandvliet op zaterdag 3 oktober in gesprek met filosoof Jan Bor, gemodereerd door Steven van Teeseling. Aanleiding is het essay dat Bor schreef over Zandvliets werk, dat verscheen in de onlangs uitgebrachte monografie Monolith. 

GRIMM is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Robert Zandvliet, on view at the Amsterdam gallery from September 5 through October 3, 2026. This will be the inaugural exhibition of the new Amsterdam gallery, situated at Leidsegracht 38-40. 

Zandvliet’s work explores the garden as a microcosm of nature, presented as large colour fields filled with overlapping layers of greenery. This exhibition will present works in his Paradaidha series, stemming from an Old Persian word meaning ‘surrounded garden’ and also the origin of the word ‘paradise’. The series makes reference to Claude Monet’s Nymphéas, painted in the artist’s gardens in Giverny. Just as Monet used these tableaux to focus on core principles of colour and form, Zandvliet looks closely at the motifs within these paintings to deconstruct and rework them, teetering between figuration and abstraction.

Zandvliet’s career has been one of constant evolution and experimentation, exploring the interplay of light and shadow, as well as ideas around authenticity, reproduction, the materiality of the canvas and the distinct qualities of line, colour and depth. His work approaches the theme of landscape as an archetype, focusing on the pictorial representation of landscape-like qualities: vastness, light, spatial dynamics, a changeable and fluctuating quality or, on the contrary, a feeling of tranquillity and timelessness.

Over the course of nearly thirty years, Zandvliet has presented his work in major solo exhibitions across Europe and the US. The artist made his debut with a series of paintings of everyday objects: a hairpin, a rearview mirror or a cinema screen, first exhibited in 1996 at Witte de With (now Kunstinstituut Melly) in Rotterdam. Using only a few contours and colour planes, Zandvliet reduced them to their essence, exploring the tension between the depicted object and the painted form. These works were the subject of his first institutional exhibitions in the Netherlands, at the Dordrechts Museum in 1996, and at De Pont Museum in Tilburg in 1997.

Zandvliet has gone on to show his work at the Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain in Strasbourg, France, which presented the first major exhibition of his landscapes outside of the Netherlands in 2000. This was followed by presentations at the Stedelijk Museum and Kunstmuseum in Luzern, as well as Zandvliet’s first survey exhibition at the Kunstmuseum in Bonn and De Pont Museum in Tilburg.

In more recent years, as with the Paradaidha series, Zandvliet’s work has has sought inspiration from various periods in art history, looking to his predecessors to reflect upon and deepen his understanding of painting. This was the starting point of his exhibition at the Vincent van Gogh Huis in Zundert in 2015, for which the artist responded to Landscape at Auvers in the Rain (1890), a rain-drenched landscape that Van Gogh completed towards the end of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise. Zandvliet has referenced artists from Picasso to Velázquez, drawing out details that, together, allow the artist to construct the archetypes of his own inner world.

About the artist

Robert Zandvliet lives and works in Haarlem (NL). He received an MFA from De Ateliers, Amsterdam (NL) in 1994. He is a recipient of the Prix de Rome (1994), the Charlotte Köhler Prize (1998) and the Wolvecamp Prize (2004).

Recent exhibitions include Aan de oevers van de tijd (2026-27), Fries Museum (NL); Paradaidha (2026), Kunsthalle Darmstadt (DE); The Painting is a Door (2026), Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf (CH); Pink Moon (2024), GRIMM, London (UK); Florilegium: Overview 1998 – 2023 (2023), Peter Blum Gallery, New York, NY (US); Beyond These Walls (2025), AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); and My World, curated by Hans den Hartog Jager (2024), Singer Laren, Laren (NL).

Selected collections include ABN AMRO Art Foundation (NL); AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); Colby College, Museum of Art, Waterville, ME (US); De Nederlandsche Bank (NL); De Vleeshal, Middelburg (NL); The David and Indré Roberts Collection, London (UK); Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht (NL); THE EKARD COLLECTION; H + F Collection, Rotterdam (NL); KPN Art Collection, The Hague (NL); Kunstmuseum, Bonn (DE); Kunstmuseum, Luzern (CH); Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); Microsoft Art Collection, Redmond, WA (US); Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg (FR); Museum Belvédère, Heerenveen (NL); De Pont Museum, Tilburg (NL); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (NL); M HKA, Antwerp (BE); Rijksmuseum Collection (NL); Rabobank Art Collection (NL); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL) among others.