In undertaking a project to represent the people, objects and events solely prior to the day of his birth, Marcel van Eeden (*1965) creates visual narratives that draw from disparate sources both visual and written. His oeuvre is divided into three main bodies of work: individual drawings, his various “narrative” series, which includes a cast of fictional characters, and the Category or Cat. series. Working primarily in monochrome on paper on a modest scale or, more recently, on a larger scale, he undertakes the endless and absurdly self-generating task of a desire to draw everything prior to his existence. Through the creation of semi-fictional protagonists and events, and by using material that pre-dates his own life, he questions the authenticity of autobiography and our broader experience of history and its documents.

Marcel van Eeden
Hans Thoma Prize 2023
August 13, 2023
Sprüth Magers congratulates Marcel van Eeden on winning the Hans Thoma Prize 2023. Since 1949 The Hans Thoma Prize honours the work of an outstanding artistic personality who has a focus of artistic creation in Baden-Württemberg or was born here. The prize is accompanied by an exhibition at the Hans Thoma Art Museum in Bernau in the Black Forest, organised by the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe for the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts.
For more than 30 years, van Eeden has been inspired by photographs, magazines, advertising material and postcards to create his characteristic deep black charcoal drawings. Initially more like single images, which he published daily on his blog between 2001 and 2007, van Eeden over time developed powerful series with narrative content, which were linked to aesthetic elements of film noir or the graphic novel.
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