Description
Orso signed 'G.v.'t Net' (on the stairs lower right) oil on canvas 170 x 100 cm. Executed in 1933. PROVENANCE Collection NV Koninklijke Bijenkorf Beheer (on loan to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 1948-1972). Their sale, Sotheby's Amsterdam, 30 March 1995, lot 35, where acquired by the present owner. LITERATURE G. van 't Net, 'Pen en penseel' in: Schilders over schrijvers, bijzonder nummer van Critisch Bulletin, The Hague 1947, p. 218 (ill.) L. Brozek, 'Aanwinsten' in: Mededelingen Centraal Museum, (no. 18), T. Osterwold, A. Vowickel (ed.), Van Gogh tot Cobra, Nederlandse schilderkunst 1880-1950, Amsterdam 1980, p. 200 (ill.) Het Gerucht, Uitgave van de stichting ter bevordering van het surrealisme, 1993, no. 13, p. 17 (ill.) Jan Juffermans, Met stille trom, Beeldende kunst en Utrecht sinds 1900, Utrecht 1996 (first ed. 1976), p. 137 (ill.) EXHIBITION Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Onze kunst van heden, 1939-1940 Utrecht, Genootschap Kunstliefde, Gerrit van 't Net, 1941 Amsterdam, Museum Fodor, Nederlandse realisten en expressionisten, 1964 Utrecht, Centraal Museum, Gerrit van 't Net, 14 September - 28 October 1979, cat.no. 58 (ill. on front cover and p. 3) Deurne, Gemeentemuseum de Wieger, De Automatische Verbeelding, Surrealisme in Nederland, 1989, cat.no. 6 Arnhem, Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Magie en Zakelijkheid, realistische schilderkunst in Nederland (1925-1945), 13 November 1999 - 6 February 2000, cat.no. 99 (ill.) (travelling exhibition to: Paris, Institute N‚erlandais, 2000) NOTES The present lot, Orso from 1933, is generally considered as the most important and most successful painting in the oeuvre of Gerrit van 't Net. He painted the work, just like the major part of his surrealist pictures, quite early in his career, when he was still a student of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam at the age of 23. Among his teachers there, like R.N. Roland Holst and H. Campendonk, it was J. Jurres who had great influence on the young Van 't Net, especially in palette and in forms. But with respect to the content and theories, his surrealist oeuvre is virtually unthinkable without the influence of his Utrecht colleagues and friends Willem van Leusden and Joop Moesman. Orso is a picture of ambitious scale and full of symbolic (and sometimes unclear) references and layers of meaning. Even the title of the picture, Orso means bear in Italian, is indistinct. Ype Koopmans tries to provide an explanation for these complicated references and the meaning of the subject in 1999: "The whole seems like a free association in the manner of Freud. There are many motifs of anxiety apparent in the painting, like [...] the chopped off head with a book pressed on it's face, in a transparent box. A seemingly direct quote from Freud's Traumdeuting is the green lizard on the box. Freud considers the lizard -that can loose its tail after the slightest touch- as a symbol of the amputation of the penis, provided that the tail will grow back, contrary to the head in the box which is separated from the body for ever, a nightmare of the same category. Van 't Net probably referred to art history primarily. The fact is that since ages it is customary to depict Saint John the Baptist accompanied by a lizard, as a reference to the desert he lived in, and not as a prefiguration of his decapitation or symbolic castration. The anthropomorphous architecture in the background is a clear derivation of the paintings of Salvador Dali. It suggests embracing figures; without reaching each other they form a gate together. The flesh-coloured balloon is unthinkable without Odilon Redon's famous one-eyed balloon. Redon dedicated it to Edgar Allen Poe, another author admired by Van 't Net. Much more difficult to interpret is the female figure wearing a suit with tie and a walking stick. She is usually explained in terms of sexual ambiguity. Contemporaries will probably have seen her travesty as eccentric feminine though; costume and hair remind us mainly of screen goddesses of the time, like Greta Garbo and MarlŠne Dietrich in their most famous roles. The white gloves, the walking stick and the orange dancing shoes also fit this image. Although it leads to a beach, the monumental staircase she descends from seems to suggest some kind of ballroom surrounding. The woman reminds us of a modern Salom‚, the ruthless majorette of Gustave Moreau, completed with the ash-grey head of Saint John the Baptist." In a series of drawings, Moreau transformed the story of the death of Saint John the Baptist into a sadomasochistic affair. His new version of the bible story made a deep impression on many later authors and artists. "This could for instance explain the bauble she holds in her hand. Moreau gave his Salom‚ a lotus flower, commonly known as a phallic symbol within various archaic civilisations. Although it is much too small to interpret with certainty, it somehow reminds us of something comparable: the amulet with winged phallus worn by Roman hosts. Van 't Net probably did not dare to be more specific than this. Perhaps the title Orso is not aimed at the woman but at the head, the portrait of the artist himself, whom had portrayed himself like that on several other occasions. The fact that Saint John was dressed in animal skins does not seem to be the motive. It is more likely that 'bear' was a pet word that was used by the tamer of bears that was used as a model for the painting, a certain Eline Visser. And what about the book? The Gospel according to Saint Marc without a doubt, in which we can read about the decapitation of Saint John in verse 6:14-29" (exh. cat. Arnhem, p. 252-253). His life long friend and surrealist colleague Joop Moesman considers the early works of Van 't Net as the best in his oeuvre. According to Moesman the genius Van 't Net was unfortunately nipped in the bud: "The genius Gerrit was, after a very difficult childhood, predestined by nature to become one of the greatest ever. Alas, when we prune a tree or a shrub too much, it will never grow again. This beautiful wild shrub, called Gerrit van 't Net, which always grew back forcefully, was pruned so many times during a long period by teachers, supervisors, agents and other highly qualified art masters, all with the best of intentions, that it finally took a step backwards and laid its head in Cezanne's lap, so that in the end we can only admire a once promising trunk" (a handwritten letter published for an exhibition in 1979 at Galerie Petit in Amsterdam).
