Ruw weer boven de uiterwaarden

The still productive Willem den Ouden (Haarlem, 1928) is devoted to the Waal and its floodplains. Den Ouden was educated at the National Academy for Visual Arts in Amsterdam, where he later also became a teacher. At the end of the sixties he settled with his wife, the painter Ferry Alink, in Varik on the Waal that he loved so much. In countless paintings, etchings, drawings and watercolors he has captured the Betuwe river land. However eternal the great rivers may seem, the running water is also subject to change. This painting was made for the dyke reinforcement that Den Ouden fiercely resisted in the eighties and nineties of the last century. The work is thus not only a representation of the landscape but also a document of the changing landscape. After all, the Waal has changed shape and route several times in recent decades. This work can be seen until September 23, 2018 in Gelderland Grensland, an exhibition in CODA Museum Apeldoorn that brings together landscape painting from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. An excellent opportunity to travel through the province of Gelderland on the basis of masterpieces from four centuries of art history! www.coda-apeldoorn.nl/gg Image: Willem den Ouden, Rough weather above the floodplains, 1971, watercolor, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam