Clown on red Palette

Quirijn van Tiel started his career as a painter around 1920. The Flamish expressionistic painters like Permeke influenced Van Tiel and he painted scenes inspired on the southern province of Holland: Zealand. His paintings are quite dark and desolate, he often painted black clouds above an abandoned polder. He began painting in a surrealistic way after 1936 and most of the time his work was a combination between symbolics, poetry and realism. He started painting dark, thick contours around his figures, inspired by the painter Rouault later on. He always experimented with different styles and after his expressionism, surrealism and abstract expressionism he ended up with geometric-inspired work.