Marijn van Kreij: Nude in the Studio

In the summer of 1955, Picasso moved his studio to La Californie, a Belle Époque villa from 1920 situated in the hills surrounding Cannes with a scenic view of the Mediterranean Sea. The large Jugendstil windows and the outlook on a garden with cactuses, eucalyptus and palm trees found their way into Picasso’s paintings. These “interior landscapes,” as Picasso called them, depict unfinished paintings and sculptures, painters’ materials, musical instruments and miscellaneous objects that he used as props in his work.

Nude in the Studio
In the past years, Marijn van Kreij has worked on a series of drawings and paintings modeled after Picasso’s interior landscapes. At Marres, he presents hundreds of these drawings and gouache paintings, from monumental works on thick watercolor paper to loose series on sketchbook paper, advertising leaflets and other printed matter. He combines these works with sound sculptures made from collected and found materials and a series of stools from his studio. Marijn van Kreij made the exhibition’s signature piece Nude in the Studio together with pupils from the Japanese mountain village Kamiyama. At the historical Marres house with its intimate rooms and beautiful city garden, an association with Picasso’s summery studio on the Mediterranean coast arises almost instantly.

Marijn van Kreij (1978)
Marijn van Kreij’s body of work consists of drawings and paintings on paper, collages, objects, slide projections, videos, and sound pieces that are brought together in carefully-composed exhibitions. He often collaborates with other artists, designers, writers, or musicians as shown in his collaboration with Akiko Wakabayashi and Raphael Langmair in this exhibition. The artist previously displayed his works in solo exhibitions in Amsterdam, Berlin, Haarlem, London, and Zurich. He was awarded the Dutch Royal Award for Modern Painting in 2013 and the ABN AMRO Art Award in 2016 (a prize awarded as an incentive for talent in the Netherlands). Van Kreij lives and works in Amsterdam and teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy.

Marres
Marres is a house for contemporary culture located in the historic center of Maastricht, the Netherlands. Marres explores new developments in the international visual arts. It develops exhibitions, commissions new works, and signals artistic practices. Its main emphasis lies on building a vocabulary of the senses, for which it explores a broad range of artistic practices, including music, theater, dance, cookery, but also the sciences.

Marres receives structural support from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Municipality of Maastricht and the Province of Limburg.

Marijn van Kreij: Nude in the Studio is made possible by the Mondriaan Fund.