An artistic adventure with a social goal
In the late 1950s, Alexander Orlow, who was then the director of the company and himself a passionate collector of modern art, came up with the idea of hazarding an experiment involving contemporary art in the factory in Zevenaar. Production halls – especially in those days – were bleak, noisy and not that visually stimulating for the people who spent much of their day in them. Orlow wanted to enliven this working environment by hanging enormous paintings over the machinery. “Live while you work,” was his maxim. After all, art appeals to the imagination and opens the door to emotions. Earlier attempts to improve the working environment by such means as painting the machinery in bright colours had not been enough (although they resulted in the concept, accepted worldwide, that machinery could be green instead of grey).

		“The fact that Orlow was a true revolutionary cannot be emphasised enough,” says the current advisor, Martijn Sanders. “Instead of hanging paintings in a ‘white cube’ – a totally neutral environment – he chose to hang them in surroundings where everything is moving and rattling. A really incredible concept.”
Alexander Orlow

Joie de vivre
Orlow invited thirteen artists from various European countries to create a painting for the production halls, the theme being “Joie de vivre”. Each painting would have to be large in size and include vivid colours and powerful shapes that would be strong enough to stand out in the large noisy factory halls. For most artists, this application of art was a completely new experience. Employees, too, were caught unawares by this artistic adventure. This was because the paintings were installed at night as a surprise. The initial response of the majority of employees was shock, but this changed quickly – so quickly in fact that after six months, the employees even expressed a preference for the abstract works. This was the start of the Peter Stuyvesant Collection in 1960 (now the BATartventure Collection) and its adventure in art.