Schrittmacher by Robert Smit

Artist list

Robert Smit

In the complete history of art exists the phenomenon of outstanding personalities which do not belong to any “school”, to any current or movement, but claim their own singular and separated position. To this category we associate Robert Smit, born in 1941 in Delft / NL, hometown of light blue fayences, like the sky above Holland. In 2014 he was awarded with the Goldenen Ehrenring of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Goldschmiedekunst. In 2016 he will celebrate his seventy fifth birthday.

Smit, as young observer, has witnessed the departure in avant-garde art after the Second World War. He was among the circle of NUL in Delft (the Dutch version of ZERO), in particular close to Jan Schoonhoven. In the beginning of the sixties he went to Pforzheim to study jewelry with Klaus Ullrich. Since then he is known worldwide as a jewelry artist.
In the meantime we can look back on a rich and varied oeuvre full of surprises, which include both drawing and classical goldsmith’s labour, experimental research as well as the conceptual
examination of artistic questions and technologies used in the digital production of images. Color sound, linear structure, the handling of paper and pen, composition and narrative tendencies shape his creative range. From a young age Smit had the opportunity to absorb parallel and similar reflections in other areas of the arts. This was essential for his ongoing process and has been a decisive factor for his artistic autonomy.
In 1972 he left jewelry, to turn back in 1984 and confess his love for gold. He remains faithful to a sort of constructivist interpretation of jewels, and to graphics and drawings as expression of material thinking. His pieces are reminiscent of Dutch still lifes, sea landscapes, vedutas and genre paintings – this however only as background information and reference to his origins.
At the same time matrix and reduction testify in his work a narrow relationship to abstract traditions in art. The quintessence lies at the end in a metaphorical sign, in a poetic synthesis between modernity and contemporary language, a development which is becoming stronger with the combination of words and a gestural esthetic vocabulary.
With Smit jewelry is transforming in cultural message and reminiscence. It talks about cultural
experience and memory. Ornament, figuration and abstraction conspire in perfect harmony.

 -2016-2016