Bart Drost

Art Galleryde Natris is closed until August 2020.
From April 20 to September 6, a different work of art will be shown every two weeks.
One artwork in the gallery space can be seen from the street.

Bart Drost and fellow artist Henriëtta van de Westelaken each showed old or new work five times - alternately.

Drost found a great way to present his paintings from the nineties: not hanging from the wall, but standing free in space. The painting as an image. This design makes you want more! Perhaps a painting exhibition, presented as a walk through the woods.

the bleu shorts

Oil on canvas, 12 pieces, 250x230cm., 1997.

In 1996 Bart Drost traveled with his family in Africa. One fine day he walked with his five-year-old daughter through Nairobi. There and then he became aware from one moment to the next that he has a color. He felt white for the first time in his life. Whiter than white.

From that moment on, colored human figures appear in his paintings. First light brown and dark brown. Later also old pink, blue or green.

It wasn't me

Oil on canvas, 12 parts. 210x270 cm. 1999.

In 1999 Bart Drost made a number of large format oil paintings under the title "fresh paintings". At the end of that year, Museum Het Valkhof made its project space available at the time for its installation 'Innocent India'.
In front of the entrance to the hall was a small unused space. Drost wanted to exhibit one of the large paintings. But unfortunately, the museum said "No. Project space = project space ".

With great pleasure he now shows the canvas in the space of Galerie De Natris.

the boy in the circle

Oil on canvas, 220x300 cm, 12 parts. 1999/2020. 

Time and circumstances have a major influence on the impact and perception of a work of art.

Bart Drost quickly painted the boy in the circle in 1999, based on an advertisement photo in a newspaper. The photo showed a boy drawing a circle on the beach with a stick in the wet sand. When the canvas was finished, the artist missed something and added three orange panels with two reaching, dark arms.


When in 2017 Drost decided to destroy a large number of his paintings , The boy in the circle was saved. However, he threw away the orange panels.

When a circle around you has almost become a social obligation in the corona time of 2020 and fierce discussions about white and black flare up again, Drost decides to restore the painting to its former glory and places it as an independent work of art on wooden uprights in Gallery the Natris.

I was a good kid

was installed in 2005 at the CBKG in Arnhem. The reason for the work was an advertisement photo in a newspaper: a group of boys gathered around a campfire. An idyll that is shattered by commerce. It was advertised as like a bank, an insurance company.

At De Natris the painting ('death of the blackbird', oil on canvas, 15 parts, 210x450 cm, 2002) is in a semicircle, as it were a sculpture. In front of the floor is a black bird (papier-mâché).

The idyll boys around a campfire is rudely disturbed when that campfire turns out to be a dead blackbird.

What difference a hat makes

Installation, multiple, screen printing on cardboard, mixed media, dimensions variable 1997-2020. Collection artist.

In 1997 Bart Drost was commissioned by Van Dalen Schoenen to create the 'little December man', a multiple in an edition of eighty that was placed in all shop windows of the store chain as a promotion during the December month. The male alternately wore three headgear: a Santa Claus miter, a Santa hat, and an end-of-year fire arrow.
Afterwards, Drost received a large number of December males in return and in 2000 he made his own hat for each of these males, in the context of the series Godsgeschenken in the Grote Kerk of Veere, with the idea 'What difference a hat makes'.

In 2020, as part of the ZINBEELDEN project, Drost made the short film 'What difference a hat makes' in which the males play the leading role.

Now the men are in the room where fashion designer and hat maker Loes Moezelaar had her studio / shop from 1980 to 1994.

Walking from Bart Drost's studio to Galerie de Natris takes 15 minutes. It was a beautiful summer. And in the basement of the studio there was an old shopping cart. One thing leads to another...

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