Jan van Heel artwork • painting • previously for sale Hand and autumn leave

The Hague painter Jan van Heel originally painted in a tempered Expressionist style. After a sojourn in Paris in 1946 he gradually abandoned figuration for an entirely personal idiom. He mainly used earthy colours, like russet browns, ochres and yellows for his landscapes, figures and still lifes. Van Heel was extremely active in The Hague artists’ societies Verve and Fugare, in which members were united in trying to break with pre-war artistic convention. However they were less radical than the Amsterdam Experimentalists and the Cobra group.