Benjamin Lucien Royaards - "Women's occupation" - pastel drawing on board; hand signed

Benjamin (Ben) Lucien ROYAARDS
(Schoorl, March 7, 1939 – Montbrison-sur-Lez, October 30, 2009)
Draughtsman, watercolorist, sculptor and painter.

"Women's occupation" - pastel drawing
Crayon on board - Hand signed (bottom right) ± 1957
Dimensions frame: 45 x 42 cm
Dimensions artwork: ± 42 x 39 cm

Benjamin Lucien Royaards was born in 1939 in Schoorl. After graduating from the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, the artist divided his personal and professional time between his native Netherlands (Amsterdam, Breestraat-Edam, Friesland, Zeeland) and neighboring Belgium (Antwerp ); he worked mainly for shorter periods in New York, Paris and the Basses-Alpes - he settled permanently in the Drôme, France in 1976.

Recognition came when Royaards was still a 19-year-old student, with the commission to paint large frescoes for the Royal Palace on Dam Square. The pressure of this first public project that put him in the local spotlight is partly the reason that he went to live abroad to be able to focus on his profession in peace.

Royaards works alternately with oil paint, gouache and watercolor, but also makes drawings and etchings.

Benjamin Royaards worked as a creative artist all his life, that is to say during the period that stretched from the 1950s until the last weeks before his death in 2009. Throughout his life he has had elements in his work that seemingly did not fit together. , reused, restored and shaped, always achieving a logical and coherent end result.

His work is characterized by the alternation of periods in which the figurative and the abstract follow each other or merge. Benjamin Royaards used various painting techniques in his work based on oil paint, gouache and watercolor. He also made many drawings and etchings.

The definitive move to France would coincide with his turn to sculpture, the medium with which he is perhaps most associated today.

In 1982 he won first prize for etchings at the Venice Biennale.

A selection from his exhibitions:

• Municipal Museum Schiedam, Schiedam (1969);
• Dutch Institute, Paris (1977);
• Great or St. Nicholas Church, Edam (1979);
• Singer Museum, Laren (1983);
• Realitées Nouvelles, Grand Palais, Paris (1984);
• Act 85, Grand Palais Paris (1985);
• Smelik and Stokking Galleries, The Hague (1990-1993);
• Art '91, London (1991); KunstRAI, Amsterdam (1994);
• Western Gas Factory, Amsterdam (1997);
• Salon du Sud-Est, Lyon (1998);
• Retrospective exhibition studio, Montbrison sur Lez (2002-2004).

Royaards passed away in 2009

The work can be picked up in Barendrecht. Pick up is strongly preferred due to the vulnerability (frame with glass). Within the Netherlands it can also be delivered by appointment; the delivery costs are maximum, depending on the distance: € 49.50.