The War Comes Home

As a child in Holland during World War II, Anton van Dalen witnessed the destruction and chaos of war. He trained as a graphic artist in Amsterdam and worked tracing patterns at a wallpaper factory in Canada before taking up painting in the early 1960s. Drawing on this design background, he developed a bold Pop-inflected style characterized by flat planes, strong outlines, extreme spatial recession, and repeated motifs: birds, buildings, and cars, most of all.

Inspired by the works of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, which he saw reproduced in magazines, van Dalen moved to New York in 1966 and settled in the East Village, where he remained for the rest of his life. His art chronicled the evolution of the community for more than five decades. These works captured the upheaval and gentrification of the neighborhood, exposing deep social crises and transformations. Rampant political corruption, the crack and AIDS epidemics, widespread homelessness, and urban decay with abandoned lots and burned-out buildings reminded him of the devasting environment he had left behind. This monumental painting powerfully casts the East Village of the 1980s as a battlefield, presenting it, according to the artist, as "a replaying of my own war." [1]

[1] David Frankel, Review: "Anton Van Dalen, P.P.O.W.," ArtForum 53 (May 2015).