Wim Oepts and the painters of the sunny South

Following the sun

'I have really been inspired by the South', said painter Wim Oepts (1904-1988). In 1937, the artist - born and bred in Amsterdam - discovered, in the picturesque fishing village of Collioure in the south of France, the magical Mediterranean light that makes the world tingle and glow with colour. Oepts settled in Paris in 1939. He felt ‘liberated’ in the city of light and would continue to live there until his death. Influenced by pure colourists like Pierre Bonnard, André Derain and his French teacher Othon Friesz, his art developed into an ode to colour in France.

Wim Oepts and his Dutch contemporaries

In addition, the exhibition includes a selection of works by other Dutch painters. For shorter or longer periods of time, these contemporaries of Oepts were also inspired by the Mediterranean light. Paintings by artists like Dirk Filarski (1885-1964), Matthieu Wiegman (1886-1971), Charles Eyck (1897-1983), Fred Sieger (1902-1999) and Otto B. de Kat (1907-1995), as well as by a later generation of artists, including Nicolaas Wijnberg (1918-2006) and Jef Diederen (1920-2009), place the work of Oepts in a broader perspective and at the same time underscore his individual, unique rendition of the sun-drenched French landscape.