Gerrit Benner artwork • painting • previously for sale Figures in the forest

The subject matter of Gerrit Benner’s paintings was nearly always the Frisian landscape with its sweeping horizons, farmhouses, dunes and cattle grazing on the land. At the same time he was not concerned with purely depicting reality, but expressing his deep admiration for this kind of nature in simple forms and using the same four or five colours. Benner was self taught and worked in the culturally fairly isolated province of Friesland until 1953, when he moved to Amsterdam. Here he was absorbed into the post-war renewal movement that dominated the city’s artistic climate at the time.