Gerrit Benner

“biographic information of the RKD, only in Dutch language”

“Impression of the Benner exhibitions in museum Belvédère, Oranjewoud and in the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, 2015 - with a lot of images of the painting art of Gerrit Benner”

“We didn't really appreciated him. We found him an imitator [early 1960's]. All those little horses of him, they were just the horses of Hendrik Werkman. Not until he started to make those large colorful paintings with skies, he became an original artist. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“After a long trip hitchhiking with Corneille to Friesland, where we came for the first time after the war [in 1946] we met Gerrit [Benner], a born painter with a Nordic fabulous side in his work. We were received by the Frisian stove with fragrant coffee and I gazed over the meadows with abstract cows, what were his paintings. We immediately called each other by the right name, also later when we met and said: 'Hey old robber, how are you?' (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“..in Friesland [up to c. 1954] Benner rarely had the opportunity to see anything of modern painting. The sense of identification of man with nature is the basis of his feeling for life and art. When he speaks about his surrounding world, the painter uses words as 'a miraculous world'. He paints in a colouring of moved simplicity; his colors, especially the primary ones, have a strong purity. His simplification of nature however is not an abstraction, the forms of animals and the landscape have never been abandoned completely.. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“I was kindly received by him [Gerrit Benner] and then he talked, with his crooked nose - because he had fallen off the chest as a child and his nose was crooked. And then he was sniffing all the time. Like: 'Yes, yes, the grass, the grass'. Then he said at some point: 'When you paint outdoors, you work from your feet up to above your head'. Well, just as simple as that, but you have to discover it yourself. You should try it. And that's it, that' it, for sure. That is one of the best lessons I ever got, that one remark by Gerrit Benner. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“That guy is painting blue and yellow horses. He is really a lunatic! (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“I love nature, what is not beautiful in nature, there are no ugly things. Sometimes the world oppresses me and then I always go back to nature, the source of all things. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“A painting is good if it is not finished. Just like ideas. Finished ideas are dead.. .Everything is floating, just as in life – also life will never get ready. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“Don't bother about the result. Throw away your thinking of art, and then become yourself: just walk quietly in yourself, in your own ground.”

“In the city you can lose yourself; that's a good thing. It doesn't work in a small city. In Leeuwarden [in Friesland, where Benner lived until c. 1954] you always met yourself again and again. But in Amsterdam there is too much to do, that isn't possible here. It's a beautiful city where I revive. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“And I painted on and on, coarsely - not skillful at all and rather clumsy.. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“I love Friesland, but I don't feel myself a Frisian. I am a human being, be called Gerrit Benner, who paints.. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“It's all about the atmosphere of nature, for sure, but I want the painting to arouse clarity, cheerfulness. When it is finished, then I have to live with it, that's why it must become a pleasant thing. Sun. Clarity. Never white-black, because there are so many shades in between! (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“I paint from my head [about his move from rural Friesland to the city of Amsterdam]. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“I am not a man of production, I am not a manufacturer. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“The further I get, the more I stand at the beginning. I'am Benner, but I do not say, I got it. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

“Yes ssjjure, it is Fffriesland, seen from an airplane.”

“When you paint outdoors, you work from your feet up to above your head. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”