Expo Engels en Van Opheusden

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Double art exhibition by Engels and van Opheusden in Geldrop Castle

From Sunday 5 May to Sunday 30 June, visual artists Gerard Engels and Jan-Peter van Opheusden will jointly exhibit at the beautiful Geldrop Castle. Both artists trained at the Academy for Industrial Design in Eindhoven (now Design Academy) after which they each followed their own direction in the art world -one as a sculptor, the other as a painter.

English
Early in his career as a sculptor, while restoring old wooden sculptures, Gerard Engels (1945) discovered that working with figures gave him deep satisfaction. Among other things, those sculptures showed him the classical ideal of beauty of the human body, which would be a guideline for his further artistic career. With that background, self-taught Engels developed into a skilled traditional sculptor, capable of convincingly reducing the form and movement of humans and animals to a rough sketchy composition of lines and planes. This has led to powerful abstract bronze torsos and sculptures of horses. His bronze works, which are meticulously developed beforehand via sketches, three-dimensional studies or 3D computer designs, display a style all their own: individual, figurative with a strong degree of abstraction. 

His creations are initially built from the torso with thin sheets of hard wax, which later remain visible in the sculpture because they do not fit together exactly, leaving gaps here and there. The limbs are often missing, as the sculpture was already complete for him without legs, arms or head. The realisation that with some imagination these abstractions can still contain a certain liveliness gives him the ultimate sense of satisfaction in his sculpture.

From Opheusden
At a young age, drawing and painting were already a great passion for van Opheusden (1941 Eindhoven). At the age of 14, he was already exhibiting in a gallery in Katwijk aan Zee. His big break into the world of art came in 1985. Through the well-known gallery owner and art collector Lambert Monet, van Opheusden got the chance to exhibit his works worldwide. After his successful exhibition in 1998 under the Grande Arche in Paris, appreciation and popularity for his work grew steadily. Today, his works find their place in large collections of mostly private collectors around the world. For van Opheusden, painting is his passion and an expression of his inner harmony. He considers colour a crucial element in his work, often using primary and contrasting colours to express direct emotions. 

Visitors to the exhibition can be inspired by the artistic creations of these two exceptional artists, with both Engels' shapes and van Opheusden's colours offering a unique experience and stimulating the viewer's imagination. The exhibition can be visited from Sunday, 5 May. The exhibition is free to enter and runs until 30 June. Opening hours are on Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays between 2pm and 5pm. The castle is closed on Thursday 9 May (Ascension) and Sunday 19 May (Pentecost). Whit Monday, however, the castle is open. Geldrop Castle's exhibition rooms are on the first floor and are wheelchair accessible.