Eugène Brands (1913–2002) was a Dutch painter whose early work was strongly influenced by Surrealism. In 1946 he exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, where he met artists including Karel Appel, Corneille and Anton Rooskens. Two years later he joined the Experimentele Groep in Holland, which soon became part of Cobra. His involvement with the movement was brief, however, and he left the group in 1949.
After his Cobra period, Brands developed his work in several directions. During the 1950s he found inspiration in children’s drawings, including those made by his daughter Eugénie. Later, landscape, nature and especially the cosmos became important themes.
From the mid-1960s onwards, abstraction returned to his work. His later paintings are often described as lyrical abstract.
Brands worked in more than oil paint alone. He also created gouaches, collages, assemblages and works on paper.
Works by Eugène Brands are held in several Dutch museum collections, including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Cobra in Amstelveen and the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam.
In 2013, the Chabot Museum in Rotterdam presented a retrospective featuring paintings, assemblages, gouaches and drawings. Five years later, Museum Cobra organised a major retrospective with more than one hundred works from different periods of his career.
