Toon Kelder artwork • painting • previously for sale A sleeping beauty
Toon Kelder
Rotterdam 1894-1973 Den Haag
1894-1973
A sleeping beauty
oil on canvas 53.0 x 69.3 cm, signed l.r.
This painting was previously for sale.
Toon Kelder is one of a number of painters inspired by the Parisian avant-garde artists to develop a highly personal style in the early years of the twentieth century. At the same time, his work was shaped by a constant drive to innovate. In the 1920s he painted flowers, figures and nudes – mostly using his wife Alexandrine as a model – all rendered in expressive colours. Through the 1930s up to around 1945, he evolved subtly stylised female forms depicted in soft, hazy hues, but also riders on horseback and mythical figures in wooded landscapes. After 1945 he gave up figurative painting and devoted himself to creating abstract sculptures.