ROTTERDAM.- Together with the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has acquired a work by the German artist Thomas Huber. Each museum has acquired one part of a two-part work. Both paintings are now on display in Rotterdam. They will be shown in Utrecht in the spring.

This spring Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen purchased the work ‘Bildaushub II’ by Thomas Huber (1955). Shortly afterwards the Centraal Museum acquired the painting ‘Bildaushub I’. “I and II belong together like the Mad Hatter and his hat in Alice in Wonderland” according to the NRC Handelsblad’s review of the exhibition of the two works at Galerie Akinci. Although the paintings may be shown separately, they gain in power and meaning when shown together. This joint acquisition and partnership between the two museums means that the paintings can always be shown together in the future. This is the first time that the two museums have made such a joint acquisition. The Centraal Museum in Utrecht already has a fine collection of works by Thomas Huber. For Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen this is the first acquisition of a work by the artist. The two paintings are shown on easels in the museum’s small gallery for new acquisitions.

Thomas Huber is a master at painting sober, precise, figurative works with a remarkable sense of space. His paintings call to mind Italian frescos of the early Renaissance and the stylised wall paintings of Oskar Schlemmer who worked at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau in the 1920s. Huber’s two paintings depict the same scene, but with a remarkable twist. They show the same space, but from two different angles. What in one painting is a pit becomes a mound of earth in the other. The entire environment is part of Huber’s temporary installation: the easels are the same colour as the museum’s panelling and Huber has selected works from the museum’s collection displayed on the walls.