Ernst Vijlbrief - Large 1960s mixed technique (pastel chalk, ink) "you are here" signed

Ernst Vijlbrief received his education at the Institute for Applied Arts Education in Amsterdam and at the Academia di Porta Romana in Florence (1956-1959). He worked in Ibiza and Paris in the late 1950s. In early February 1961 he married Sylvia Sluyter, daughter of the Amsterdam painter Gerard Sluyter and former lover of Lucebert.
In 1961 he took part in the group exhibition Younger Dutch Painters, Sculptors and Architects: League of New Images in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and in the same year, in collaboration with the poet Simon Vinkenoog, the publication Spel en Nederlaag bij de Posthoorn in The Hague was created. Around 1965 he gave guest lectures at the Ravensbourne College of Art in London.
From 1974 to 1989 he was a teacher at the AKI in Enschede. In 1975 he was the initiator of the artists' collective Universal Moving Artists that exhibited in the 'new wing' of the Stedelijk Museum. He made landscapes and self-portraits, among other things. He worked in various techniques such as: drawing, watercolour, collage, gouache, East Indian ink, oil paint and graphics: etching. He also made calligraphic improvisations on paper.
His gouaches consisted of spontaneously 'written' strokes, lines, circles, splashes and spots, his paintings often of a thick mass of paint with turbulently brushed areas of colour.
His painting style in the 1950s is expressionistic, similar to that of Cobra.
Around 1968 he made series of figurative drawings.