Han Veltman’s art is a vibrant world of people, animals, music and movement. With bold colours and confident forms, his paintings and sculptures bring together everyday life, history and human emotion.

The first thing that strikes you about Han Veltman’s art is its beauty. Behind its simple, colourful expression lies a lifetime devoted to art. Veltman began his training at the Academy of Art in Amsterdam (1943–1944), where he was accepted at the age of just 15, and later studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1948–1950). Over the course of his long career as an artist and illustrator, he developed a remarkable technical skill. Today, it shines through in his vibrant colours and clear, confident forms.

Veltman’s paintings and masks are populated by people and eyes that meet our gaze. Each has a character and form of its own, yet each is also part of a larger human diversity. We recognise something of ourselves in every one, and every face seems to carry something of us all. A world of eyes looks down from the walls: faces from different times and eras – station masters and railway inspectors, colonels, elegant men and women, troubled souls, the calm, the joyful, the sad, the desperate, the euphoric…

Animals also play a central role in Veltman’s paintings and sculptures. Dogs, cats and horses appear alongside geese whose white forms seem to take over the scene, pushing the people of the rural landscape, with their headscarves and aprons, into the background. People, animals, places and traditions come together, while the history and politics of 20th-century Europe are woven into both the motifs and the imagery. All of this is captured in the bold, assured simplicity that has become Veltman’s signature.

Music and dance are other recurring themes. Groups of dancers fill his works, while wooden sculptures bring together the shapes of musical instruments – the body of a cello, the curves of a double bass – to create entirely new forms. In his paintings of choirs, individual singers become part of a greater harmony of light, colour and form, reminiscent of the sunlit stained-glass windows of a church.

On Thursday, 27 August, from 5–7 pm, there will be an opening reception for Han Veltman’s exhibition at Nalen Restaurang. The exhibition will remain on display throughout August and September.