Theo Wolvecamp - no title.

Year: period 1950-1960
Technique: Indian ink on paper.
Signature: Hand signed by artist.
Edition: Unique
Condition: Good
Image: 20 x 28.5 cm.
Frame size: 45 x 55 cm.
Framed: Yes, floating framed in authentic frame from the 1960s. Black with silver wooden frame, 4.5 cm wide and 2.5 cm high. Has some user damage, see photos.

Theo Wilhelm Wolvecamp (Hengelo, August 30, 1925 - Amsterdam, October 11, 1992) was a painter and graphic artist, who was part of the Cobra group for a number of years.
His father was a tailor and died around 1934 when Wolvecamp was nine years old. He started painting in a refined cubist style during the war (1940-45) and learned to draw properly with private lessons. In 1942 he painted briefly with Eef de Weerd at Riemko Holtrop's studio; they both worked on a still life there. It was also Holtrop who brought them into contact with the older painters from the Goor area: Folkert Haanstra Sr. and Jan Broeze.
Wolvecamp educated himself in Hengelo by borrowing art books from the library, and in this way became acquainted with the work of, among others, the Impressionists, the Bergen School painters, Jacoba van Heemskerck and Kandinsky; he also visited the museums in Amsterdam and came across works by the painters who would establish Cobra a few years later. From 1945 he attended the art academy in Arnhem where he painted portraits, landscapes and still lifes; he only lasted a little less than two and a half years. The Amsterdam painter Piet Landkroon helped him in 1947 to come to Amsterdam and work in a shared studio, where he often experimented at night. Corneille, who lived nearby, became curious about his work and after a visit to the studio he was very surprised.

Life and work
In Amsterdam, Wolvecamp quickly became involved in the foundation of the Experimental Group in Holland and in the autumn of 1948 in the Cobra movement. In a short time he developed a spontaneous, abstract style of painting with free forms and lines, with which he immediately connected with the experimental work of the other painters in Cobra, such as Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille and Anton Rooskens, who were immediately convinced by his work when they first saw the improvisations of 'that poor Twente painter'. Wolvecamp enthusiastically supported the objectives of Cobra; his paintings, gouaches and drawings from that period are explosions of spontaneous abstractions, in which black, almost calligraphic lines wind around the yellow and blue spots that move in a light space. With the exhibition of Cobra in 1949 in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (then under the direction of Willem Sandberg) he decided to leave Cobra, but he quickly reversed his decision and returned shortly afterwards. Wolvecamp maintained contact with Appel, Constant and Corneille and took part in the exhibition in Liège in 1951. Little work from his Cobra years has been preserved because, dissatisfied with the results, he destroyed or painted over much of it.

From 1953 to 1954 Wolvecamp worked in Paris. After that he returned to the relative isolation of his birthplace Hengelo. What had to be fought for laboriously by the local painters in Twente in those years had long since become history for Wolvecamp. This head start in development certainly explains his relatively aloof attitude there. It was thanks to the legendary collector and stocking manufacturer Hans de Jong (Jovanda) that the young painter escaped the proverbial black hole. De Jong offered him studio space and a mutually stimulating contact developed between Wolvecamp and the De Jong family. De Jong was one of the few collectors in Twente who was able to follow the development of modern art internationally. For Wolvecamp, who had gained experience with kindred spirit artists in Denmark and France, among other places, but did not have the means to keep those contacts alive, it was beneficial to temporarily associate with De Jong. He remembered well how he had introduced De Jong to Appel and Willem de Kooning, to the French painters Soulages and Dubuffet, to Wols and Yves Klein, and of course to the Danish artists of Cobra: 'Sometimes I had to argue for half a year before he decided to buy something by these artists'.

Wolvecamp died at the age of 67. After his death, friends of Wolvecamp announced that the day before his cremation, more than 100,000 euros worth of art had been stolen from his home, including drawings that Wolvecamp had selected for a book.

Important exhibitions
Wolvecamp never felt the need to show his work just anywhere, but the exhibitions where it was shown were, without exception, of high status. As far as Twente was concerned, these were From Daumier to Picasso, an exhibition from private collections and selected by Dirk Hannema in 1956, in the Waag in Almelo, Facets of contemporary art in 1958 in the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede, selected by Ben Akkerman on behalf of the Enschede Art Foundation, and Gestalten in 1961 in the Kunstzaal in Hengelo. At these exhibitions he was exhibited among nationally and internationally leading and promising artists. Wolvecamp himself considered his participation in Idole und Dämonen, an exhibition by Werner Hoffmann in 1963 in Vienna, to be one of his greatest successes. There he was exhibited in the 'bird corner', between Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland, and close to Max Ernst. Hoffmann had come across Wolvecamp's work by chance when visiting an art dealer in Zurich.