Day Trip to The Hague (den Haag)

Sunday May 24 was a picture-perfect day. Sunny with a high of 27C.  Our destination was The Hague (den Haag), which is about a 25 minute train ride away.  We took our usual tram to Rotterdam Centraal Station.  The tram route is along a canal with a lot of public art.  I try and take photos out of the tram window.  I only got one photo of the sculpture that forms the start of the sculpture route on the Westersingel.

Hubert van Lith (1908-1977), Ongebroken Verzat (Unbroken Resistance), 1965.  This was an initiative of the Rotterdam Resistance Monument Foundation.  There apparently was a debate as to whether the monument should be dedicated to just the illegal resistance or all the fallen?  It was decided that the monument should be for both groups.  The result was a male figure, who looks straight ahead with his head held high-- someone who is clearly 'unbroken'.  The plinth has the word 'unbroken' in larger letters than 'resistance 1940-1945', to signify that it refers to the people of Rotterdam in general.

We arrived at Rotterdam Centraal.  It is a beautiful station.  'Sunny Cloud' is a blinking cloud of thousands of lights which acts as a meeting place for visitors to the station.  

Sunny Cloud by John Körmeling 2013

We caught the train to Den Haag, and then a tram to get to the Kunstmuseum which is in the eastern part of the city.  The Museum is housed in a magnificent Art Deco building designed by architect H.P. Berlage (1856-1934) who died one year before the building opened in May, 1935.  Berlage is known as the father of modern architecture in The Netherlands.  

Visitors were able to enjoy the new museum only briefly as the occupying Germans used it as a repository for confiscated household goods seized from the local population during WWII.   Most of the collection had been taken to safety.  There were however, 31 exhibitions held during the war years, in part to keep the entire building from being commandeered by the Nazis and in part, to offer the people of The Hague some art and culture.  Lots of interesting issues including the relationship of the staff and the occupying forces and a Pro-Nazi city council.  The Museum director Dr. Gerard Knuttel was arrested by the Nazis and held for several years in an internment camp.  After the war, repairs were made and the Museum reopened to the public in 1946.  

Den Haag has a municipal population of approximately 570,000 people and is the third largest city in The Netherlands after Amsterdam and Rotterdam.  While Amsterdam is the capital, Den Haag, located on the North Sea coast, is the seat of the Dutch parliament and is home to the U.N.'s International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.  

Outside of one side of the Museum

Photo from internet---the water feature in front of the museum is presently under renovation

The building is striking not only for its distinctive yellow brickwork, but also its spacious interior, natural light and modern colour scheme. 

Entrance way into the galleries.

There is also a large area with high ceilings and lots of light in the middle of the galleries which houses the Museum's café.  

Very large area beside the galleries- full of light

Facing the other way in the café-a small activity area
and books for children.

The Museum has the world's largest Piet Mondrian collection which is highlighted in the main exhibit Mondrian & De Stijl (from April 1, 2020 to September 27, 2026).  There were also a number of temporary exhibits that we checked out before heading to the Mondrian exhibit on the main floor. 

The first was a fantastic ceramic exhibit entitled Jan van Der Vaart: for Jan and all.  Jan van Der Vaart (1931-2000) always called himself a potter, never an artist.  For him, ceramics were part of everyday life: a vase should contain flowers, not be stuck away in a display case. Despite his modest approach, he emerged as a great innovator of post-war Dutch ceramics.  He grew up in a working-class family in The Hague, the youngest of four children.  He had an interest in technology at an early age. 

He opted for mass production- a progressive and democratic choice- but one that was controversial among his colleagues.  Although self-taught, he trained an entire generation of potters during two decades as head of the ceramics department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy.

Introduction to the Jan Van der Vaart ceramic exhibit

It was a fantastic exhibit and both Allan and I were very taken with his pieces.  Van Der Vaart developed a lustrous bronze glaze in 1960 that he kept secret.  The recipe for the glaze was discovered recently.  From the late 1950s, Van der Vaart increasingly focused on the functional aspects of his ceramics.  His works were well received in the 1960s as they fit the aesthetics of post-war modernism. 

Early works 

Some more elaborate pieces 

Vases with flowers  

Between 1968-1985, Van der Vaart received six commissions for ceramic wall reliefs in new government buildings.

Some wall pieces and more elaborate sculptures

Container pieces built by hand-- some of our favourites

A very intricate tulip vase acquired by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam after the 1965 New Forms in Ceramics exhibit where Van Der Vaart had a number of pieces.

He later did some collaborations with industry-
these were done with the Royal Leerdam glass factory from 1994.

From 1967, Van der Vaart bridged the gap between craft production and industry by making multiples: ceramic objects made in batches, cast in moulds that he developed himself.

At work in his studio

More distinctive pieces

Pieces from the 1980s.

It was wonderful learning about a new ceramic artist. The Van der Vaart exhibit was very comprehensive and we ended up spending considerable time in the exhibit.

We spent less time, but peaked into another temporary exhibit entitled: Base Line- Music Meets Art. The exhibit celebrates the bicentenary of the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.  Base Line displays instruments from the museum's musical instrument collection alongside paintings from the collection.

Allan at the beginning of the exhibit- making music by hitting the structure with an instrument

Isaac Israels (1865-1934), The Balalaika Players, 1920-27.

Balalaika, Russia 1900-1949

Gino Severini (1883-1966), Two Pulcinellas, 1922 and Lute, 1735

Derrick Ofosu Boateng (b. 1998), Music Makes the Pain Fade, 2019.  This is a common saying in West Africa.  Boateng, who is from Ghana, had a breakthrough when this photograph appeared on the cover of a 2020 album by the American rapper Common.

There was a section on dance, music and art.  The picture on the right was by Theo Van Doesburg (1883-1931) (Founder of the de Stijl movement) entitled Counter-Composition of Dissonants XVI, 1925.  It was a design for one of the walls of L'Aubette, a combination café, cinema and dance hall in Strasburg.  It is usually hung horizontally.  Here is is paired with a photo of the dancer Kamares in Theo van Doesburg's studio in front of his painting, which was hung vertically for the occasion.

1925 photo and original painting 

It was then time to explore the Mondrian and De Stijl exhibit.  The displays included work not only by the De Stijl movement's founder, Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) and Piet Mondarian (1872-1944), but also by Vilmos Huszár, Gerrit Rietveld and others.  The exhibit showcases the development of Piet Mondrian's work.  He started with early atmospheric landscapes around Amsterdam and Domburg.  He then moved on to abstraction.  His journey ended in New York where he created his last and one of his most famous work, the Victory Boogie Woogie (1942-44).   He was part of the De Stijl movement to radically renew art and design.  They developed an abstract, geometric visual language that still influences how we live and design today.

The first issue of a new art journal, De Stijl, was published in November 2017.  The editor and founder of the journal Theo van Doesburg stated that the journal was a "contribution to the development of a new awareness of beauty.  It aspires to make modern man receptive to the new in the Visual Arts."  They wanted the hierarchy between different artistic disciplines to be abolished.  They developed an abstract geometric and asymmetrical visual idiom to effect this break with all previous traditions.  

De Stijl emerged in the provinces.  The collaboration of the artists was unique.  They largely corresponded by post and did not meet very often, if at all.  De Stijl was egalitarian and believed art was for everyone.  The abstract demonstrated engagement was modern.   The Dutch historical canon includes three examples of art: Rembrandt, Van Gogh and De Stijl.  

The founder of De Stijl

Piet Mondrian-- he sometimes fought with Van Doesburg but his faith in their common cause-the new- ultimately remained unshaken.

Gerrit Rietveld (1888- 1964).  He trained as a furniture maker in his father's workshop. He helped Van Doesburg and J.J.P. Oud in their attempts to give the traditional interior a new, spatial design.  
He broke off relations with Van Doesburg in 1928 but in 1951, he designed the De Stijl exhibition
at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam

The following are examples of Mondrian's works in chronological order followed by other artists of De Stijl.

Mondrian, The Red Cloud, 1907

Mondrian, Woods near Oele, 1908

Mondrian, Flowering Apple Tree, 1912

Mondrian, Composition in Oval with Colour Planes 2, 1914

Mondrian, Farm near Duivendrecht, 1916

Mondrian, Self-Portrait, 1918

Mondrian, Composition with grid 9: checkerboard composition with bright colours, 1919

Mondrian, Composition with large red plane, yellow, black, grey and blue, 1921

Mondrian, Tableau I (Painting I), 1921

Unfortunately, the original unfinished last Mondrian- Victory Boogie Woogie was out for conservation until June, 2026.  There was a piece by Perle Fine (1905-1988) entitled: Still Life of "Victory Boogie Woogie".  The original had remained unfinished in Mondrian's studio after his death in 1944.  There were hundreds of small pieces of tape and cardboard which he had planned to replace with paint, so the piece was very delicate. Emily Tremaine, the former owner of Victory Boogie Woogie had Perle Fine  (who admired Mondrian and danced the Boogie Woogie with him), make an exact copy in 1947.  It became known as a 'still life' of the original.  When Mondrian's masterpiece finally ended up in Kunstmuseum Den Haag in 1998, Fine's painting came with it.

A Still life of Mondrian's Victory Boogie Woogie

There were a number of other artists and furniture makers in the De Stijl movement represented in the exhibit.  

There were many paintings  by De Stijl founder Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931).  

Van Doesburg, The Card Players, 1916-1917

Van Doesburg, Composition IX, Opus 18: further imagining of the card players, 1925--- great example of how the artist moved from realism to abstraction

Theo van Doesburg, Typography for De Stijl: Postcard, receipt, wrapper and memorandum-paper, 1922

Paul Schuitema (1897-1973), Letter relief, ca. 1930

Villmos Huszár (1884-1960), Couple Dancing, 1938-39

Gerrit Rietveld (1888-1964), Red blue chair, design ca 1918; Execution-Gerard van de Groenekan (1904-1994), for Truus Schröder

Huszár (colour) and P.J.C. Klaarhamer (1874-1954), furniture.  Boys bedroom suite for the home of the Bruynzeel family in Voorburg, ca. 1920.

G. Rietveld- Schröder House Model 1924 

There were many debates between the artists within De Stijl.  Van Doesburg, editor-in-chief of the journal   was dogmatic in insisting that paintings be sufficiently abstract-- "transformed" as they called the process of abstraction.  Asymmetry was encouraged.  After Van Doesburg's death, his wife Nelly van Doesburg (1899-1975), a pianist and actor, devoted herself to keeping his memory alive. 

We peered into a studio where kids were making art

We really enjoyed the Mondrian & De Stijl Exhibit.  A deep dive into Mondrian and the very exciting and innovative De Stijl movement which had a major influence on modern art.

We then went to the second floor to see a terrific temporary exhibit entitled: London Calling, which brought together a cross-section of modern British painting to explore how a diverse group of artists have   imbued the human body with new meaning since the end of WWII.  The exhibit features the work of fourteen artists.  At its core is the so-called School of London who remained committed to figurative art.  They include Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and R.B. Kitag. The exhibit also includes the work of Paula Reno, Eva Frankfurter and Denzil Forrester.  Only a few of the artists were born in London, but all of them made it their home at one time of another.  In 1945, the city lay in ruins, but in the decades that followed it became a crossroads of ideas.

Entrance to the Exhibit

John Deakin Photo: Lunch, Wheeler's Soho, 1963.  From the left: Timothy Behrens, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews.

Francis Bacon (1909-1992), grew up between Ireland and England.  When his father discovered he was gay, he threw him out of the house.  After periods in Berlin and Paris, he settled in London in 1928.  After the horrors of WWII, Bacon was unrivalled in his depictions of the human condition, with all its anxieties, obsessions and vulnerability.

                                                              Bacon, Study for a Portrait, 1953

Bacon, Man in Blue, 1954

Lucian Freud (1922-2011) was born in Berlin, the grandson of Sigmund Freud.  His family moved to London in 1933, to escape Nazism.  Around 1945, he met Francis Bacon, with whom he developed an intense friendship.  His work is more realistic than Bacon's, but both artists shared the view that painting the human figure expressed something about life.

                                           Lucian Freud, Man with a Thistle (Self-Portrait), 1946

Freud, Leigh Bowery, 1991

Freud, Girl in a Striped Nightshirt, 1983-85

R.B. Kitaj, was an American-born painter (1932-2007) who worked on cargo ships before briefly serving in the US army.  In 1959 he studied at the Royal College of Art in London, where David Hockney was a fellow student.  Migration and the Jewish diaspora became important overarching themes in his work.  Many of his canvases depict events with broad social resonance.  In 1976, he curated the exhibition The Human Clay at London's Hayward Gallery, selecting figurative artworks by contemporary artists including Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Sandra Fischer and David Hockney.  He proposed the existence of a 'School of London', a group of highly talented London-based artists who put the human figure at the centre of their work.

Kitaj, The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg, 1960-- the painting also contains portraits of his grandmothers.

Kitaj, The Rise of Fascism, 1975-1979.  There are three bathers in this picture.  The woman in the middle represents fascism, while the woman on the left is its victim.  The bather on the right represents the average European, passively observing the danger of fascism.  There is a bomber flying into the scene from the left.

Denzil Forrester (b. 1956), was born on the Caribbean Island of Grenada.  He moved to London to join his mother.  He lives in Hackney.  In the 1980s, he found his subject matter in the subculture of reggae and dub clubs and the constant threat of police violence. 

Denzil Forrester

Forrester, Funeral of Winston Ross,1981

Paula Rego (1935-2022), War, 2003.  She was born into a liberal family in Lisbon during the authoritarian regime of Antonio Salazar.  She studied in London and then lived in both capitals until settling permanent in London in 1980.  Literature, myths and fairly tales were a source of inspiration.

Celia Paul (b. 1959) , My Mother with Shining Eyes, 1983. Paul was born in India as the daughter of missionaries.  From the age of five, she grew up in England.  She was the companion of Lucian Freud for many years.  

Michael Andrews (1929-1995) was born in Norwich.  He studied under Lucian Freud.  He was interested in existential questions and human interaction.  In the 1950s and 60s, he was a central figure in London's artistic circles around Bacon, Freud and the infamous Colony Room Club in Soho. 

Andrews, Self-Portrait, 1959

Eva Frankfurther (1930-1959), was born into a Jewish family in Berlin and fled as a child with her family to London to escape Nazi persecution.  She began her art studies in 1946 and worked as a waitress in a working class restaurant.  During the day, she painted her fellow waitresses.  She died at twenty-eight, leaving a small body of work documenting a city in social and cultural flux.

Eva Frankfurther, West Indian Waitresses, ca. 1955

There were also a number of paintings by David Hockney (b. 1937 in Bradford in the north of England).  In the mid 1960s he moved to California.  Although he has spent much of his life in the US, he has remained well connected to London's network of figurative painters over the years.  Recently, he has made London his home again.

Hockney, Mr. and Mrs Clark and Percy, 1970-71

Hockney, My Parents, 1977.  From the end of the 1960s, Hockney painted a series of monumental double portraits that are among his most personal works.

The last painting in the exhibit was by Michael Andrews entitled: The Colony Room I. 1962.  For this painting of the Colony Room Club, he took his own experiences of Soho's vibrant nightlife as his starting point.  The Club was a private members' club on Dean Street.  Bacon has his back to us on the right; Freud, facing us centre right, Frank Auerbach and Andrews himself.

Andrews, The Colony Room I, 1962

After our visit to the Kunstmuseum, we took the tram back to the centre of Den Haag, near the under- renovation Binnenhof parliament on the Hofvijver Lake.

Lake and Parliament on the right

There is a BlowUp Art exhibit around town from May 22- June 21, 2026.

Allan under the Tunnel, by Steve Messam who has made a name with inflatable art.

In front of the Bubble Tunnel.  Enjoying the sun.

                                     We stopped for coffee at Filtro coffee down a nearby narrow street.

                                                        I had an espresso fredo and Allan had a flat white.

Then fries down the street in a small hole in the wall place. We had a nice chat with the owner.

Street with cafés and the Girl with a Pearl Earring mural

There was a plaque beside this interesting closed coffee shop called DuckRabbit Coffee Brewers.  Around 1883, the building was occupied by an Artist supply shop.  Vincent Van Gogh lived and worked in The Hague at that time and purchased his paints and brushes here.  He painted one of his most famous works "The Potato Eaters" during this time, 1885.

We wandered a bit more and deked into Passage which had a number of stores.  

Passage

Inside Passage

Part of BlowUp Art- Theo Botschuijver, Ode to the Light Bulb.  
The artist has been a pioneer in inflatable art since 1967.

We went to an early dinner at Istana, a recommended Indonesian restaurant.  The food was excellent.

Allan about to dig in.

After dinner, we walked to Den Haag Centraal and caught the train back to Rotterdam.

Den Haag Centraal

It was a very short train ride but packed with Sunday travellers.  We then caught our usual tram to the apartment.

My quick photos of public art from the tram-- Joel Shapiro, Zonder Titel (1999)

August Rodin, L'Homme qui Marche (1961) 

We were back in the apartment by around 7:40 p.m.   It's been a tale of three cities so far.  Rotterdam with its amazing architecture and incredible cultural institutions and markets.   Delft, for a step back in time, with an incredibly beautiful setting among the small canals and narrow streets.  Finally, Den Hague, where we really enjoyed our half day at the Kunstmuseum.  It has a mix of the modern and the old, though we did find the downtown area had too many big box stores.  On the other hand, there are large parts of the city centre that have only tram and pedestrian accessible areas.  Den Haag has an sxcellent food and cultural scene and it is a very prosperous city.   It has been fun to do short day trips from Rotterdam.  The train and tram networks are awesome.  Monday May 25 will be our last full day in Rotterdam, before we take the Eurostar to Paris.