Erik Mattijssen

Plastic buckets, dolls, tin cans and furniture. They populate the scenes that artist Erik Mattijssen (Veenendaal, NL, 1957) builds in his drawings of pencil, gouache and pastel crayon. Like in a theatre, he tells stories, often set in interiors in which things take the leading role. People are absent. What happened there, the solidified life stories, thoughts and memories, are told in these tableaux vivants with props.

The artist fills his scenes - with great attention to detail - with objects, in an intuitive, collage-like manner. He works from an image archive he collected over the years. He owns folders full of images of flowers, toys, patterns and the canned goods his father sold as a salesman. Experiences from the many foreign residences where he stays also end up in his work. The colours of Kolkata, façade advertisements, tin cans with plants in Suriname and a grocery shop in Paris enrich his subjects and style.

The work conveys layered, sometimes contradictory feelings to the viewer, supported by  his striking use of colour. Sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholic; for a wooden stool or suitcase can conceal a faltering ambition. Loneliness is also an important theme, reflected in abandoned beds, cuddly toys and dolls that don't get love (anymore). Mattijssen keeps memories alive and taps into layers of our subconscious. Like the smell of madeleines Marcel Proust wrote about, that triggered a flow of memories. Painted and drawn on paper, his objects take you back to a lost time.

Mattijssen cradles us back and forth between recognition and alienation. Through abrupt cuts and playful perspective, bold colour combinations and through what we see. For why is that hippo hanging on a string above the mantelpiece? While looking at his work, you are left wondering. According to him, the highest achievement.

Erik Mattijssen has had solo exhibitions at museums such as Kunsthal Rotterdam, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Jan Cunen Oss and in 2025 at Museum More. His work is included in prestigious international museum, corporate and private collections, including those of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, AkzoNobel, the DELA, the UMC-Utrecht and the VandenBroek Foundation. He made in situ work for public places such as the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital, Amsterdam and won the NN Art Award. A committed and passionate teacher at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Mattijssen trained a generation of young artists.