Untitled (3 pieces)

About this artwork.

Three large exterior wall paintings adorn the Faculty of Engineering building at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences. Joost Swarte designed the artworks and, in collaboration with visual artist Gerrie Starreveld, the drawings were transferred to the metre-high walls. The two had already worked together before: on a mural for a car park in Haarlem.
 
On one of the works, a bespectacled “bookworm” is sitting in a nocturnal forest on the branch of a tree, staring at the screen of his computer. He doesn't realise that he has turned into a night owl. Another mural shows two figures ‘manufacturing’ an apple tree. In a third painting, a figure sits on a table with a rod in his hand, while another figure stands near a rotating mechanism that produces plates with one corrugated edge.
 
The drawings are an example of how Swarte succeeds in capturing nature and technology – the faculty's two main disciplines – in one image.
 
Joost Swarte is best known as a comic strip artist. In his work he uses the ligne claire style (finely detailed drawings), inspired by Hergé (of “Tintin”) and Robert Crumb, the American underground cartoonist.
Swarte is also a designer, artist and architect.

Facts & Figures.

• Design
  Joost Swarte

• District
  Zernike

• Year of creation
  1997

• Art type
  Painting, Art in / on a building

• Material
  Paint

• Dimensions
  h 8,00/4,00/6,00 m x b 4,00/8,00/8,00 m