[Exhibition]
Willem de Looper: Paintings 1968-72

About This Event

HEMPHILL opens Willem de Looper: Paintings 1968–72 on Saturday, January 14, 2012, with a public reception from 6:30–8:30pm. The exhibition will remain on view through March 10, 2012.

It is with great excitement that HEMPHILL presents four large scale paintings from the late 1960s and early 1970s by Willem de Looper (1932–2009). These four paintings are part of de Looper’s body of stained color field works created at the height of the Washington Color School movement. Working mostly without brushes during this period, de Looper eschewed graphic gesture and flooded un-stretched canvases with layer after layer of dramatically thinned acrylic paint. He then stretched the canvases, presenting atmospheric imagery without any reference beyond a purely visual experience. These immensely rich Color Field paintings were likely shown at Jefferson Place Gallery, the home to other great artists of the Washington Color School.

HEMPHILL’s show of these four de Looper paintings recognizes the works as part of a significant artistic achievement and serves as a remembrance of a gallery that supported the efforts of the Washington Color School artists.

Born in Hague, Netherlands, Willem de Looper came to Washington DC in 1950 and studied fine art at American University. The artist worked his way from museum guard to chief curator at the Phillips Collection and landed his first solo exhibition at Jefferson Place Gallery in 1966. De Looper has been exhibited and collected by many established museums such as the National Gallery of Art, The Phillips Collection, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.