According to Rudi Fuchs, the former director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the excellence of Ad Snijders’ oeuvre lies in its astonishing variability. The one hundred artworks from the collection of Gerard Meulensteen demonstrated the undisputable qualities of the artist who follows the great tradition of modern Dutch painting and experiments of the Cobra movement. Snijders treats paint in an uninhibited spontaneous manner. His early works exploited the improvisation potential of light brushwork in paint drippings, splashes, scumbling and dramatic clashes of lines. He evolved a new variant of genetic figuration, which gradually acquired a distinctive form. The figurative permanently transforms, creating new expressive messages. Snijders’ spontaneous style of painting employs creative improvisation. The line has a distinctive position in his paintings also when he applies paint with the paintbrush. It is energetic, but it has its own life in the context of forms: its role is not to describe or “visualise” the form. In association with colour the line co-creates the pictorial structure as a whole. The artist understands the form in its rudimentary primordial manifestation as a psychological probe into its existence. In his vigorous expressive style and brilliant almost hypnotic colours, Ad Snijders created an exceptionally powerful pictorial message.
