Cees van Rutten studied graphic design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. His preference for the clear rhythmic structure is unmistakable; the surface, rhythmically divided, with fascinating play of light and shadow, articulated in regular forms of stacked figures.

Van Rutten likes subtle contrasts between regularity and disturbances, between tight and frayed, tough and fragile, between smooth and rough, cut and torn. The work is of great simplicity. The art historian tends to look for movements that the objects could fit with and then ends up with colleagues such as Jan Schoonhoven and Ad Dekkers, with movements such as Nul or Zero. Movements that are characterized by a formal and distant impersonality, something you cannot say about Van Rutten's work. His interest in the disturbance and distortion, the ripple in the regularity, makes his work very personal and gives it a poetic dimension.