CERVANTINO

Poen de Wijs (Dutch artist) 1948 - 2014
Don Quichot en Sancho Panza (Don Quichotte and Sancho Panza), 2011
acrylics on panel
21 x 27 cm.
signed Poen de Wijs
private collection

Don Quichotte, fully titled The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (Spanish: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha), is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Published in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quichotte is considered one of the most influential works of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published, such as the Bokklubben World Library collection that cites Don Quixote as authors' choice for the "best literary work ever written". It follows the adventures of a nameless hidalgo who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and decides to set out to revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world, under the name Don Quixote.

He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quichotte's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood. Don Quichotte, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story. Throughout the novel, Cervantes uses such literary techniques as realism, metatheatre, and intertextuality. It had a major influence on the literary community, as evidenced by direct references in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers (1844), Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, as well as the word "quixotic". Arthur Schopenhauer cited Don Quichotte; as one of the four greatest novels ever written, along with Tristram Shandy, La Nouvelle Héloïse, and Wilhelm Meister.

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They have known each other from the moment that Fred, as a young boy, received drawing lessons from Poen's studio. There he learned life drawing, still life drawing, in charcoal and in watercolour; the basic exercises of the fine arts. "At that time Poen opened some creative shutters with me" Fred says about the drawing lessons. And Poen about Fred: "He was 13 years and all artistic impulses coming towards him must have made an impression on his young mind. My big house was filled with artists and musicians. It resonated with creativity." Fred knew then: "Working with so much passion, that’s what I want, too!" That he was to become a theatre maker was only forfilled in time!
When they met again after many years, a spontaneous plan arose, to make a series of paintings about Fred as a theatre maker. Poen had laid down many famous and lesser known artists, musicians, actors, dancers and clowns on the canvas (including the musical clown’s duo MINI and MAXI), but a theatre maker, working with puppets and masks, which is much more than just an actor, that was new to him.
Once Poen began with the development of the spontaneous idea, a series of paintings about the theatre maker Fred Delfgaauw, he didn’t know to where that eventually would lead. He began a quest, in which he knew one thing in advance for sure: he didn’t want to make just a recording of the performances of Fred, but it should become a personal vision of Fred and his work.
And so a year followed with visiting shows, movies, clips and watching old photographs, reviews, articles and reading books, talking with Fred and with people around him, to continue with sketches and doodles, with studies of facial expressions, with some photo sessions, with preliminary studies to finally paint twenty works on canvas. All this led to two exhibitions in the ‘Gorcums Museum’ and in Gallery ‘De Twee Pauwen’ in The Hague, and was captured in the documentary film "Moments" by John Vijlbrief and in a catalogue.

Text: press release for exhibition "MOMENTS"
Fred Delfgaauw 30 years theatre maker painted by Poen de Wijs
Poen de Wijs