Gloom and Doom for one Dutch Impressionistic Painter

Anthonius Henricus “Toon” Koster 

(Jan. 19, 1913- Nov. 25, 1989)

Night City

$1,200

24 x 36”

Oil

Antonius "Toon" Koster, a renowned Dutch artist, was born in Schiedam, (South Holland) Netherlands in 1913. He went to the Art Academy in Rotterdam, Netherlands and became a painter, printmaker, industrial artist, enamellist and muralist.

During most of his artistic career he lived and worked in Nieuwkoop near the Nieuwkoopse Plassen.

Koster was a member of the Dutch Federation of Visual Artists, and died November 25, 1989 in Woerden, Netherlands.

Koster often used dark earthy colors and painted in broad coarse brush strokes, creating depressive and gloomy atmospheres; making for subtle impressionistic qualities.

When asked to which movement he belonged or which subjects he preferred, he answered: “There is no movement… and everything repeats itself.”

“Night City”, is a signature city-scape by Koster that exemplifies all that he was known for: boats, cities, gloom, illuminating sun/moon behind clouds, and his pictorial post WWII depressive metropolis.

A one point perspective only exacerbates the depressive complexity of the work with the angling of the drab buildings that line the boulevards, structures as borders for the blackened water in the industrial canal, a waterline that is cut midway down the composition with the three arched bridge.

 We are boxed in on three sides with the horizon line blocking an eternal view.  However, our release from the melancholy is up into the sky, but wait – impending catastrophes await us in the heavy snow laden billows that weigh down on us with only a glimmer of light; a false hope.

Friedrich Nietzsche once said “Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.” ‘Tis true when dealing with Anthonius Henricus “Toon” Koster.

© Gabriel Diego Delgado/ J.R. Mooney Galleries

Ph. (210).828.8214