It was in the white villa on Zonnebrink in Winterswijk that Piet Mondriaan took the first steps in his development as an artist. Piet drew and painted the Achterhoek landscape. In his quest, he was helped mainly by his father and by his uncle. These family members introduced him to the world of brushes, paints and painting techniques. Although the world-famous painter was born in Amersfoort, Piet laid the foundations for his artistic coming-of-age in Winterswijk. The social safety net and culture in which Piet grew up were an important breeding ground for his art.

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Radical renewal
In the exhibition HEIMAT | Young and Promising, six contemporary artists take us through their artistic coming-of-age. For some of the participating artists, their childhood memories are entangled with deeply rooted traditions. Birthplace is home, the people around you and the familiar surroundings you can long for. Sometimes these memories are nice and at other times they have a negative impact on identity formation. Each in their own way, Hugo Béhérégaray, Kyra Nijskens, Thijs Segers, Tommy van der Loo, Antonino de Caro and Eleye Boerenkamps give an insight into their personal HEIMAT – the ground where their family history took place in their early years.

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Feeding ground
Like Mondriaan, the six artists in the third edition of Young & Promising take their own ‘home’ as the breeding ground for new work. Antonino grew up in a village with deeply rooted traditions in the production of ceramics. In his artistry, he harks back to this craft. In a playful way Antonino’s ceramic pastes refer to the production of ceramics in his native village. For Eleye it is the autobiographical way of working that creates lasting memories. In the photo series she made for the exhibition, she links home, street, ancestors and the memories that come to belong to ‘home’ over time. For French Hugo architecture is also the starting point. In a life-size installation, we are introduced to the residential destinations Hugo visited: France, Zealand, France….

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Whereas Eleye uses her father’s swear words as inspiration, for Tommy it is specifically his mother who is the personification of ‘native soil’. For Villa Mondriaan, Tommy deliberately chooses a new material, namely a special mortar used on Curaçao, among other places. With this choice, he touches on his partially Antillean origins. Kyra also reaches back to the physical soil of her youth. She grew up in South Limburg, an area known for its unique type of soil called loess. In imaginatively painted forests, she conveys the magical effect of nature. That nature is also transitory can be seen in Thijs’ two- and three-dimensional paintings, where the inner world of experience and the processing of memories take centre stage.

Whichever way you look at it, native soil is an indispensable breeding ground for artists.