See through

Some of the artists:

• Olafur Eliasson

  Olafur Eliasson believes that insight comes from seeing and experiencing. His sculptures and installations are always based on fascinating physical principles. They skilfully summarize what we as humanity are dealing with when it comes to the environment.

• René Daniëls

  In the second half of the 1970s, following a period in which an idea was enough to become a work of art, René Daniëls puts painting back on the map. His style is loose and free. In terms of content, however, he refers to so-called Conceptual Art and also to Surrealism.

• Lourens Alma-Tadema

  Early in his career, Lourens Alma-Tadema decides that classical antiquity is what he wants to paint. He imagines life as it would have been in those times and does extensive research to make sure the scenes are historically accurate. Because his work is so successful, he is able to shape his own life and image according to his idealized image of a past culture. His huge London house with its fairy garden and the parties he throws there are famous and make him even more popular. His many romantic, role-affirming scenes, like this one, have a huge influence on the film industry in Hollywood.

• Jacoba van Heemskerck van Beest

  Jacoba van Heemskerck is one of the most innovative artists in the Netherlands when German publisher and gallerist Herwarth Walden discovers her in 1913. She exhibits annually at his gallery, Der Sturm, and her work is featured in the art magazine of the same name. Van Heemskerck is interested in spirituality, particularly Rudolf Steiner’s ideas about expanding consciousness through mental exercise. She develops a visual language with sweeping lines, but the subject remains somewhat recognizable, as in this painting. Over the years, Van Heemskerck uses increasingly thin and transparent paints.

• Leon Adriaans

  Brabant native Leon Adriaans (Helmond 1944-2004 Sint-Michielsgestel) was an artist. His art was a true soul quest. Or, as he himself put it: 'Art, for me, is the lifeblood itself, the untravelled regions of the soul, the quest for insight.' Adriaans painted on a motley assortment of materials, from cattle feed sacks to oilcloth and rough planks. He made rough bases for his work from cattle feed sacks glued together. This was a curious choice, and a means of setting himself apart from, and rebelling against the prevailing laws of art.

• JCJ Vanderheyden

  Paintings, graphics, texts, installations, and photo and video art: the oeuvre of JCJ Vanderheyden ('s-Hertogenbosch 1928-2012) is very much part of the landscape of post-war art in the Netherlands. For over fifty years, his studio in the old centre of 's-Hertogenbosch was the place where his paintings and photographic works of dividing lines, horizons, and airplane windows came to life. The dominant themes of space and distance formed a continuous quest for the intersection of blue and white. During the creative process, Vanderheyden always asked himself just one question: 'What am I seeing? And how can I depict it so that others see it the same way?' With his distinctly visual intelligence, the artist transformed the ordinary into the extraordinary.

• Mark Manders

  Once we learn to read and can name the things around us, we often lose our childlike sense of wonder and playfulness. Not Mark Manders (Volkel, 1968). The multidisciplinary artist is supremely skilled at creating confusion: that moment when you don't know what you're looking at. This is the very thing that makes his work so intriguing. In his oeuvre, which has no clear beginning or end, Manders explores our relationship with things.