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Phaenomenologie des Radfahrers
Artist Derk Thijs (1977)
Title Phaenomenologie des Radfahrers
Year 2014
Material Gouache on linen
About the work How do you think the artist went about creating this work? How did he arrive at this choice of colours, shapes and lines? The title offers some hints. The first word, “phaenomenologie” (phenomenology) is a strand of philosophy that studies how we perceive the world around us and how we sense things. “Radfahrer” is German for cyclist. This suggests that the painting may be a personal study of how a cyclist (the artist himself, perhaps?) experiences a bike ride. Is this similar to your own experience?
About the artist Early in his career, Derk Thijs created sculptures and paintings that avoided current events and offered a glimpse into another, mysterious dimension. Later, he trained his focus on the world around him and he created paintings of living rooms, for instance, and the port city of IJmuiden, where he had a studio for a while. He studied at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Constantijn Huygens in Kampen (now ArtEZ) and was an artist-in-residence at De Ateliers and the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. He has won several awards for his work, including the Jeanne Oosting Prize and the Buning Brongers Prize. He currently lives and works in Amsterdam.
In the collection Acquired in 2014. Earlier, De Nederlandsche Bank acquired another work by Thijs, painted in 2009. Unlike Phaenomenologie des Radfahrers, that untitled work depicts a paradisiacal dream world. Together, these two paintings reveal Thijs’ development as an artist. This is in line with De Nederlandsche Bank’s policy of following artists as they develop and purchasing multiple works by the same artist.
