Ad Snijders (NL, 1929) is inextricably linked with the Van Abbemuseum and Eindhoven. As well as two solo exhibitions and participation in numerous group exhibitions, he can rightly be described as a major eyewitness of the museum.
The exhibition opens with a documentary section. Through museum archive photographs and numerous documents from the artist, the nineteen sixties and seventies are evoked once more. Central to this are the Eindhoven art scene at the time and the 1970 exhibition Tot lering en vermaak. Together with a selection of works by Snijders in the following rooms, an impression is given of a fascinating period with many unexpected indicators pointing towards the new paintings.
Women and landscape recur repeatedly in all manner of variations in his work, like in the recent series Paradise Lost. Each scene appears to come out of a murky area between figurative and abstract. The edges and the frames of the various paintings are always black.
An erotic glance infuses this series of work still in progress, yet this can be anything but reduced to one interpretation. Snijders invites the museum visitor to a fascinating form of looking at icons: beyond the immediate perception of each individual work lurks the 'garden' of painting, between woman and paint.
Snijders explores for the umpteenth time in his versatile body of work a new artistic field. His explorations force him again to take risks. The reappearance of a woman in his paintings is not a matter of repeating a subject, but a continuous attempt and quest to turn the revelation inside out.

To accompany the exhibition A Garden Between Woman and Paint there is a catalogue on the new series of paintings.