Modern composition, no. 6, 1974

Piet Keuning is a Leeuwarden-based artist who works in a recognisable geometric abstract style. He trained at the Akademie voor Beeldende Kunst Vredeman de Vries in Leeuwarden and soon got the opportunity to exhibit at home and abroad, from Galerie Van Hulsen in Leeuwarden to the Young generation exhibition in Stockholm in 1974.

He also made sculptures in public spaces. His work has been acquired by several museums, companies and institutions. In the early 1970s, he made geometric stamp patterns on Japanese paper. He also printed the same geometric patterns in thin sheets of copper. Later, he produced blindprints, a printing technique that does not use printing ink, again with the repetition of shapes.

The strength of the work is, on the one hand, its aura of tranquillity and simplicity, but on the other – and surprisingly – its constant change under the influence of light and shadow. This arises from his material use of metals, such as copper, where light acquires a playful effect. The works invite the viewer to constantly occupy new positions: distance, near, front and side. The work also demands movement from the viewer. Taking distance and then slowly approaching or passing the works. Each time the work reveals itself differently.

Keuning developed his own style in the sixties and seventies from a vision that, although it had also been adopted by the Zero movement, by its consistent application tells a Frisian story. We may say that Keuning is an exponent of the strong and long tradition in Fryslân of abstract-geometric and monochrome art that broke through in our province around 1965. That breakthrough can be called late compared to the rest of the Netherlands, but it took Fryslân longer to rid itself of a strong romantic-landscape-oriented art.

In Fryslân the search for the silence of the cosmos, for the ideal proportions in lines and planes and for the subtlety of light remained strongly present in the visual arts, as can be seen in the work of Piet Keuning.