Two Still Life Paintings by Henk Helmantel

Stilleven met tomaten (Henk Helmantel)

Henk Helmantel is a contemporary Dutch still life painter who paints classical subjects in a traditional style realistic taken from the Dutch golden age.  He mostly paints fruit, bottles, and boxes (although occasionally he paints an animal or some snail shells).  Although Helmantel’s work is classically inspired, it does not seem to have the same allegorical underpinning that 17^th century Dutch art had.  Instead the drama in the work is conveyed by the arrangement of the objects and their relationship to the space around them.  In this respect—in color, form, and context—the works are indeed modern.  The spare clean lines and delicate loveliness of plums, berries, and vessels is somehow reminiscent of abstract artists and contemporary Dutch architecture (even if the paintings are simultaneously so dissimilar from these schools).

Fles Berkemeyer en keukenattributen (Henk Helmantel, oil on panel)