Bertus Voortman - IJsselzicht Zutphen - with cows in the floodplains

Bertus Voorman was a true ‘Zutphenees’. He was born here in 1916, he lived to be 96 years old, 90 of which he lived in Zutphen. He showed a talent for drawing at an early age, and he was encouraged in this by teachers and lecturers. He became a furniture maker, but when he was in his early twenties he went to ‘Kunstoefening’, an evening academy in Arnhem. The plan was to become a drawing teacher. Because the war broke out he had to give up that training. He then called drawing his ‘hobby’, which he continued to do for the rest of his life. He left behind a very varied and extensive oeuvre. It contains many hundreds of drawings, watercolours, pastels and paintings with Zutphen as the subject