Biography

Arjan van Helmond is interested in painting as a medium that helps us think about objects, places and representations of spaces of our daily lives. His art practice focusses on appropriating through painting the unspectacular and even banal aspects of daily life: a view of the sea, a garden, the house we live in, the carpet under our feet, souvenirs and trinkets in the closet. Images that tell us a story and yet, his paintings are not explicitly narrative. Instead they use ordinary and evocative details to build up a form of realism, to trace a path between history, culture, cliché and everyday human behaviour; Arjan van Helmond lives and works in Amsterdam. He graduated from the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in 2004. In October 2019 he created a public artwork in the NS Station of Leeuwarden, named Golfbrekers. In 2017 he received the Jeanne Oosting Prize. Solo exhibitions include: Museum More-Gorssel; Museum Kranenburgh-Bergen; De Nederlandsche Bank-Amsterdam; Lucebert Huis-Bergen; LUMC-Leiden; and many others. His work can be found in international collections like the William Louis-Dreyfus Collection, Stedelijk museum Amsterdam, The Saatchi Collection, Schunck, De Nederlandsche Bank, Chadha Art Collection, Akzo Nobel Art Foundation, Heden, The Schorr Family Collection, Rabo Art Collection and many more. Arjan van Helmond is represented by Gallery Gerhard Hofland in Amsterdam.