The Dutch artist Niels Smits van Burgst grew up in Maassluis, a riverside town south of The Hague in the southern Netherlands. He studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Art in 1993 and his Masters Degree in 1994. He currently lives in Rotterdam where he works in a large studio near the Sparta Stadium. His bold figurative style in impasto oils conveys scenes from everyday intimate life, often using shape and colour to suggest figures and their surroundings rather than depicting them in more precise detail.

The main emphasis of van Burgst’s work is to show an identity, an understanding of what it means to be alive in modern western society. His paintings, with their broad brushstrokes and cool palettes, provide the memories for their subjects’ life experiences. With an emphasis on the experience of being men, especially gay men in society as he is himself, van Burgst presents images of men living in a world where many of their excesses, such as lust, aggression and euphoria, are often suppressed, yet these excesses find outlets in group activities and stylised media channels including television and the internet. His recent paintings have moved away from an emphasis on the experience of men towards more general social scenes, which often become more amorphous compositions using colour to suggest figures and objects.

Niels Smits van Burgst’s  paintings have been exhibited in New York, Berlin, Amsterdam and Brussels. A retrospective of his work was held in 2013 at the Museum de Buitenplaats in Eelde.

Niels Smits van Burgst’s website is here, his Instagram page here, and his Facebook page here.

We are very grateful to our Russian friend Yuri for introducing us to the work of this artist, and for supplying most of the images.