De Ploeg

De Ploeg in Singer Laren

In June 1918, some Northern Netherlandish avant-gardists set up Groninger Kunstkring De Ploeg. Among them are Jan Altink, Johan Dijkstra and Jan Wiegers. Like the farmland in Groningen is plowed every year, they want to give visual art a new impulse. According to them, art should express the new era.

In 1920 Jan Wiegers befriends the great German expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) in Switzerland. Wiegers then introduces his rough brushwork and bright use of color to his Groningen colleagues. Each of them gives their own interpretation to expressionism. And just like Kirchner, the people of Groningen are also experimenting with new painting techniques and use of materials.

Thanks to two donations, this important Dutch avant-garde movement is represented in the collection of Singer Laren. The foundation for this was laid in 1996 with the transfer of two paintings by the heirs of the Rotterdam cabaret historian and grand artist Alex de Haas (1896-1973). In 2014, with the substantial donation by Renée Smithuis, another seven Ploeg paintings were added to the museum collection.

From the spring of 2022, De Ploeg's expressionism will form a permanent part of the collection presentation in Singer Laren's new Nardinc rooms.

The reason for this presentation of all Ploeg works from the collection of Singer Laren is the recently published De Ploeg extra muros by Stichting De Ploeg. This publication is available in the Singer Shop.