For the first time in a long while, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam will be presenting a solo exhibition by Lou Loeber (1894–1983), whose vibrant, socially engaged, yet accessible work made her into a unique artist. While Loeber experimented with abstraction, she never implemented it as rigidly as her contemporaries Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. The reason for this was that she always wanted to keep her work comprehensible to a wide audience. The museum has a work by Loeber in its collection: the silkscreen print Slapenden (Sleepers, 1975). The exhibition also marks the launch of a programme about women artists from the 1970s who worked in an abstract style and to whom Loeber was an important source of inspiration.
Lou Loeber, Sleepers, 1925, Zeefdruk, 65 x 65 cm. Drukker Rolf Henderson, 1974, collection Stedelijk Museum Schiedam
From an early age, Lou Loeber already knew she wanted to become an artist. Growing up in a progressive family, she was given all the space she needed to develop her talent. Her father even built a garden studio for her. In 1918, Loeber left the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam after three years because she found it too conservative. In the 1920s, she went on to develop a style of her own in which she combined abstraction with recognisable depictions. Although she closely studied the work of Kandinsky and De Stijl, she always remained true to her own vision. With characteristic vivid colours, geometric shapes, and black contours she intended her work to convey a universal visual language for everyone to understand.
Inspired by the French artist Albert Gleizes, Loeber furthermore designed a system to create multiple versions of a single work, thereby applying the modernist ideal of mass production to the visual arts. By executing her works in a variety of mediums, she was able to lower the price and thus make art accessible to a wider range of people. In 1932, she and her husband, the artist Dirk Koning, established an art library where people could rent their artworks at an affordable price.
Lou Loeber, portrait by unknown photographer, October 1967, Collection RKD, Pictoright
Despite her recognisable style, Loeber always wanted her works to be impersonal. She was, after all, interested in creating universal art, not in individual expression. She used her designs – interiors, landscapes, still lifes, and portraits – to experiment with colour, form, and composition. She was constantly searching for harmony between abstraction and figuration, which she hoped would contribute to realising a better and more socially just world. According to Loeber, art had to be both accessible and connective.
After the Second World War, Loeber continued to make art inspired by her socialist ideals, even though she had lost all hope that a more equal, socialist society would ever actually be realised. She nonetheless never lost her conviction that art had to be comprehensible as well as accessible to everyone. This ideal perfectly matches the ambitions of Stedelijk Museum Schiedam.
Lou Loeber, Fabrieken IV, 1933, Bruning Heintz Fine Art, Amsterdam
In 2024, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam rediscovered Loeber’s work while organising Abstract Art by Women, Then and Now. In this presentation, her silkscreen print Slapenden was shown alongside work by other women artists. This renewed appreciation also marked the point of departure for new research into women artists working in the abstract style like Corrie de Boer, Christa van Santen, Karin Daan, and Ria van Eyk, and future exhibitions of their work.