This bold and tactile abstract composition by Dutch painter Jan Engelchor exemplifies the expressive power of mid-century gestural abstraction. Rendered in thick, almost sculptural layers of oil paint, the work is a visceral landscape of reds, ochres, greens, and whites, rhythmically built up to evoke emotional tension and material presence. Its impasto surface and palette align Engelchor with the European Art Informel and CoBrA movements, which prioritized spontaneity, emotion, and the raw texture of paint over rigid formalism.
Engelchor, born in 1920, was active in the postwar Dutch art scene. Though lesser-known today, he worked in the spirit of the avant-garde currents sweeping Europe during the 1950s and '60s. His work reflects an intuitive, physical relationship with paint—evoking influences from contemporaries such as Karel Appel or Asger Jorn, while remaining uniquely grounded in his own painterly language.
This painting, bearing the artist's studio stamp on the verso, likely dates to the 1960s, a period of renewed artistic freedom and exploration in the Netherlands. A powerful and authentic artifact of its time, it speaks to an era when painting was both an existential act and a search for new visual languages.
