Characteristic of the artist, who also gave the museum its name, Henk Chabot, is a humanist view of humanity. This is an aspect that can also be found during the interwar period in which Chabot was active, in a number of architects who worked in a style of the so-called ‘Nieuwe bouwen’, including the architect of the former residence that now houses the Chabot Museum. An important starting point for the architects of the Nieuwe Bouwen was that, with modern techniques and materials such as reinforced concrete, spaces could be created in which life would be better for people. In this exhibition, the work of Henk Chabot is shown in relation to the architecture of the villa; a story about the search for light, air and space. An ideal that was brutally disrupted by the bombing of Rotterdam: the beginning of the Second World War in the Netherlands.
In a new, ongoing exhibition, a number of key works from the collection of the Chabot Museum are shown. Important works by Henk Chabot tell the story of the interwar period, together with contemporaries such as Ossip Zadkine, Jan Kamman, Emmy Andriesse, and later kindred spirits such as Klaas Gubbels and Anne Wenzel.](en)