After Wout Muller’s early death, in 2002 his partner Clary Mastenbroek curated a collection of reminiscences and memories from Muller’s friends and acquaintances. The collection, Wout Muller: Zijn Paradijs (His Paradise) sums up Muller’s approach to art and life, calling him among other things ‘a festive realist’ whose main aim was to please people with his paintings.

Another Muller quotation in the book is ‘What you learn guides you, but what you want to learn also does that. Curiosity is very fruitful.’ And much of that curiosity was unashamedly erotic; his leafy paradise was full of naked women with ample breasts and bottoms. He had a lifelong interest in what constituted the erotic life, and explored it to the full. He even created an ‘erotic cabinet’, now housed at the Museum de Buitenplaats in Eelde.

In this portfolio, Mijn Paradijs (My Paradise) we show Muller’s work from the mid-1960s to his death, showing how his erotic style developed from a surrealist approach to – especially around the time of the move to Ireland – a more rural, garden-based, serene set of paintings.