Everyone Wants to Go Home

Artist: Norbert Schwontkowski

Norbert Schwontkowski (1949-2013) is perhaps one of Germany’s best kept secrets. Yet these days his poetic work is gradually attracting more and more admirers outside his homeland. Inspired by Zen Buddhism, which he discovered on trips to Asia, he would seek the aesthetic of the moment, creating work that seems to touch upon a story, without ever telling us how it ends. Sometimes his paintings have a deep existential theme, and sometimes they present absurd situations from daily life, like a man rifling through the fridge in the middle of the night, looking for something to still his rumbling stomach.

But the subject is always an individual in search of enlightenment and inspiration in a grim world. Thanks to Schwontkowski’s dry humour his work is never depressing, however. He often prepared by making quick pen sketches in the sketchbook he always carried with him. Everyone Wants to Go Home brings together some 80 paintings and over 40 sketchbooks from international collections, and has been created in collaboration with Kunstmuseum Bonn and Kunsthalle Bremen, where it was shown previously.

Until 24 January
Stadhouderslaan 41

Guide

The Grey Space in the Middle
Sinarts Gallery
Galerie Maurits van de Laar
Museum Rijswijk
Museum Rijswijk
Galerie Ramakers
exhibition
until 25 June

Alphabetum XIII

Mallarmé
West Den Haag
Stroom Den Haag
exhibition
until 02 July

Solo exhibition Chen Ruo Bing

Chabot
exhibition
until 09 July

Natuurlijk

Ghita Skali
1646
exhibition
until 16 July

(、ン、)

Alexandre Lavet
Dürst Britt & Mayhew
WTC The Hague Art Gallery
West Den Haag
Biennale Noordwijk
West Den Haag
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