Helly Oestreicher at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam)

Helly Oestreicher: Small Works
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
25 June – 25 September 2011

This summer Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is showing a selection of approximately thirty small works by Oestreicher (1936) in several vitrines and on the wall. In the early 1960s Helly Oestreicher was part of the innovative generation of Dutch ceramicists who redefined the discipline. The expressiveness of the object is central to her oeuvre. Her works appeal to the viewer’s senses and imagination by exploiting the specific characteristics of the material, using contrasting materials and playing with the balance between materiality and negative space. Oestreicher’s material is her instrument, with which she gives concrete form to her thoughts.

Dutch ceramics since the 1960s
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has previously shown the work of Oestreicher’s contemporaries Jan van der Vaart (in 1991) and Johan van Loon (in 2009). Like Oestreicher, these artists broke in different ways with traditional ceramics. Johan van Loon is known for his extremely diverse forms and experiments with decoration, and Jan van der Vaart made
innovative, abstract geometric works, but remained dedicated to function. Helly Oestreicher’s work is the most sculptural of the three.