Colors Before Zero: Commercial Alkyd-Oil Enamel Paints in Early Reliefs by Jan J. Schoonhoven

Abstract

Jan Schoonhoven (Delft, 1914 – Delft, 1994) is widely known for his formal white reliefs, made out of cardboard, newspaper, glue and covered with matte white house-paint. Rather than producing a ‘painted Zero-relief’ Schoonhoven wanted his constructed surfaces to catch light and cast shadows over the squares, verticals and horizontals, over the circles and diagonal shapes, producing different images of the relief depending on the available light and the hour of the day.

Before Schoonhoven started making these white reliefs, he produced more informal, half ‘smashed’ relief structures, with variable shapes and depths, and covered these with colorful enamel paints, applied in brushstrokes, dashes and drippings, clearly imitating the style of Jackson Pollocks’ drip paintings. During construction the reliefs would stay positioned horizontally on the working table, also during the painting of the artwork, as can be seen from the downward direction of the paint drips. In this way Schoonhoven avoided any planned or designed painterly surface. Once ready the relief would be placed in vertical position and hung on the wall. This research focusses on the transition period when Schoonhoven changed from colorful enamel paints to white matte house paint. Through the examination of several of his works during this period it was of interest to determine how this development had occurred: as a clear break in applied paint material, or as a more gradual transition from the period before, to the time after 1960.