ART INTERNATIONAL

Joop Sanders
by Kenneth B. Sawyer

Those riches are more than imagined in the paintings of Joop Sanders, they are activated into movement. Joop Sanders is that rare combination of European respect for craft and American impatience with it. In the earlier works one had the sense that his métier was the final impediment of pure expression; the new work has come free, has rejected the attrition of the built surface. Sanders has approached the Erebus of direct expression: it is almost as if nothing supervenes between man and canvas. To experience a Sanders oil—they are less seen than felt — is to experience the supreme sensualism of the curve. Interpret it as you will, the curve, the weights and valuations that control it, is the feminine form (or perhaps the form of the earth itself). Joop Sanders’ painting is basic and ambitious; he has achieved his aims. Only a true artist could build so much by discarding a total heritage.

-Kenneth B. Sawyer