The Wolvecamp (Hengelo, 1925 - 1992)

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Theo Wolvecamp began to paint during the war, and from 1945 to 1947 he attended the art academy in Arnhem. During this period he was keenly interested in German and Flemish expressionism. In 1947 he settled in Amsterdam, and after a short flirtation with cubism he developed his own world of spontaneously applied symbols.

Wolvecamp was a co-founder of the Dutch Experimental Group in 1948, when he was already busy with experiments. Among other things he used sand in his paintings. He left the CoBrA movement in 1949 after the exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum, but became a member again in 1951. Not much of his work from the CoBrA period has survived, as he destroyed much whose results did not satisfy him.

Wolvecamp was a country person who never felt at home in the city, and after the international CoBrA adventure he returned to his birthplace. "That is where you belong", his friend Karel Appel said. Based on his intense experience of nature he worked in isolation at a highly personal expressionism with characteristic forms and colours, building on the symbolic language of flecks, stripes and swirling lines that he developed during the CoBrA period.

It was not until 1967 that he went public with his work, at a one-man exhibition in Arnhem. In the years that followed his work has been exhibited at various exhibitions in The Netherlands and other countries.