Landschap met vertrekkende zon 1976

Editor: Here we have Harrie Gerritz's 1976 screenprint, "Landschap met vertrekkende zon," or "Landscape with Departing Sun" at the Rijksmuseum. I’m really struck by its graphic quality and how flat the picture plane feels. How do you interpret this work? Curator: The departure of the sun isn't just a visual event here. The sun, traditionally a symbol of life and energy, retreating beyond the horizon hints at endings and transitions, doesn’t it? Think about the other symbolic choices, like the simplified flowers which speak to a collective understanding of nature, or the gate – what might that suggest? Editor: Restriction? Or maybe passage into another space? Curator: Exactly. Consider, too, the bright, almost artificial colors. What emotions do those evoke in you, versus what you'd expect from a "natural" landscape? Does it feel more about the real or the ideal? Editor: The bright colours, the hard edges of the shapes...it feels detached from lived experience. I guess I expected something more pastoral given it's a landscape. Curator: Precisely. Gerritz seems to use these visual symbols - the sun, the flowers, the gate - not to mimic reality, but to evoke broader ideas about nature and the human relationship to it. It makes one consider: what's left of landscape when memory, not observation, recreates it? Editor: So it’s about the memory of landscape, simplified into its basic symbolic forms, not an actual place. I never thought of it that way. Thanks! Curator: It has been a pleasure exploring this fascinating piece with you. There are always new dimensions to explore when looking into cultural symbols!