Rembrandt House Museum Pairs Old Master with Glenn Brown, Horst Janssen, and Guy Vording in Paper Experimentation Show

Curator Nathalie Maciesza has organized an exhibition at the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam that places Rembrandt's works on paper alongside three contemporary artists known for their experimental approaches. Running through January 4, 2027, the show highlights how Rembrandt's lifelong experimentation with paper, ink, and pencil—constantly trying new techniques and revisiting themes—parallels the practices of Glenn Brown, Horst Janssen, and Guy Vording. Brown, born in 1966, used Rembrandt's tronies as a starting point, transforming them on an iPad into intricate line compositions before creating etchings and superimposing two etchings to produce new prints. Janssen (1929–1995) matched Rembrandt in the sheer volume of self-portraits; his 23-part etching series Hanno's Death (1973) references a character from Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks (1901), exploring decadence and decline. Vording, born in 1985, is known for concealment: he collects 1940s American magazine articles, selects pages, decides which parts of image and text to preserve, and colors the rest with pencil, yielding surprising new visual narratives. The exhibition also features Rembrandt's own works, including The Third Oriental Man (1635), Self-Portrait with Bushy Hair (c. 1631), and The Entombment of Christ (c. 1654), demonstrating his mastery of light and dark in prints. Maciesza gave DailyArt Magazine an exclusive preview of the show.