Oil paint

The exhibition Ina van Zyl: Where Are You From, currently on show at SCHUNCK Museum, features paintings of enlarged everyday things such as toes, skin, flowers, fruit and objects. One striking feature is Van Zyl’s preference for oil paint. She applies it to the canvas in thick layers, predominantly in dark colours. Her way of working gives the layers of paint a rough, textured surface.

The SCHUNCK Collection includes a large number of works by artists who work with oil paint. Each of them uses their own approach and technique. In this space, SCHUNCK presents a small selection of oil paintings from its collection.

Artists in their own words

The selection includes work by Pieter Defesche, one of the Amsterdamse Limburgers: a group of post-war artists who painted in an abstract expressionist style and helped lay the foundations for this collection. The oil paint is applied thickly to the canvas, with no clearly recognisable subject.

Ronald Zuurmond and Eli Content take this a step further: the oil paint in their paintings is applied in even thicker layers, one on top of another. It almost looks as if you could run your finger through the wet paint and give it a twist of your own.

That is precisely what attracts Rinella Alfonso to oil paint. The material offers many possibilities for manipulation, allowing her to alter its texture, transparency and intensity.

Robbert-Jan Gijzen also chooses to manipulate the material, mixing the oil paint with sawdust. Each artist, in their own way, finds a unique way to express themselves through oil paint.

The SCHUNCK Collection

The municipal SCHUNCK Collection is the oldest public collection of modern and contemporary art in Limburg and a living archive of more than seventy years of artistic development in the Netherlands. What began in the 1950s with purchases of works by leading post-war artists has grown into a diverse collection that connects local roots with national and international art practices.

The collection comprises more than 1,500 works, including highlights such as the Aad de Haas and David Bade subcollections, works by the Amsterdamse Limburgers, and new acquisitions by emerging and established artists from the region. It is a source of stories and imagination, in and for the community. With the addition of the former DSM art collection, donated in 2024, it also offers a unique, multifaceted perspective on the cultural and social history of the mining region.