Frans Nottrot

Accompanying the Art-exhibition by FRANS NOTTROT, Ilona Stichting - Amsterdam

‘These dark, glowing canvasses point towards a new direction that Frans Nottrot (Voorschoten, 1955) is exhibiting at the Ilona Stichting (Ilona Foundation). In his works of art, constructed with his palette knife with pure sienna, ochre and diluted ultramarine, the border forces itself into the radiating centre until it has completely converted into the core of the canvas. The natural brightness and translucency of oil-paint that could facilitate the accessibility of the paintings, is inhibited by a layer of varnish.’ Nottrot is aware of this, and isn’t too happy with it. The layer of varnish, only used in order to take better photographs of the canvasses, is an odd element in the range of materials that Nottrot wants to use. Being a student of renown Jaap van den Ende at the Rotterdam Art-school, where Nottrot graduated in 1982, he hasn’t used anything else but pure oil-paint and mixtures of only primary colours. With these limited means he likes to explore the different kinds of mood he is able to create. The mood of the paintings has nothing to do with the tangible reality or direct depiction of this reality. Although Nottrot did start his career by doing so: having lived in Den Helder, he tried to capture the sea and all its appearances in a more or less abstract way. The rectangular shape of the canvas emphasised the landscape format. Around 1984, in order to ban reality from his canvasses, he started to use isosceles triangles that he had learned how to stretch from Rudi van der Windt. Then, in order to avoid the naturally horizontal and vertical lines, he painted perpendicular to the sides of the triangle, and would display his work askew. These images remind us of Van der Leck, although Nottrot uses abstract arrangements. Through time, the isosceles triangle was replaced by a more neutral form: the square. The latticework has been mitigated to a lace-work of intuitively braiding strokes. Some of his works of art are displayed here. The borders left unpainted, indicate the possibility of the lace-work to continue indefinitely outside the canvas, a predominant element in his current work.

Marty Bax (art critic)

This is an integral translation of the Dutch Review Article by Marty Bax.  (See: recensie nl)

 _{Translation: A. Hillebrand & A. van Wierst}