Jan Schoonhoven - Photo self portrait

Year: 1989
Technique: Photo taken by Hanno Reuther
Photo dimensions: 40.5 x 30.5 cm
Condition: fair, has some user damage and some creases (see photos)

On the back of the photo Jan Schoonhoven has explained the description of the photo.

Johannes Jacobus (Jan J.) Schoonhoven (Hof van Delft, 26 June 1914 – Delft, 31 July 1994) was a Dutch visual artist. He was part of the Dutch Nul movement.
Training and start
Schoonhoven attended the MULO in Delft; he drew a lot and was taught by a local painter at the age of 13. He made series of caricatures that he sold for a cent each. From 1930 to 1934 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague. It was a time of crisis and he could not find a job. His parents wanted him to do that training to become a drawing teacher and thus earn a steady income.
Schoonhoven began painting for himself in the style of German Expressionism during his academy years. The work of Paul Klee inspired him; he also greatly appreciated George Grosz and Otto Dix.
He had his first (group) exhibition in 1938 at De Onafhankelijken in Amsterdam. During the war years until 1945 he hardly worked for wages; in 1941 he spent a short time in camp Amersfoort. Until 1948 he claimed to have made a lot of work in the style of Paul Klee, which he then consciously stopped doing. His works were exhibited several times during those years at the Haagse Kunstkring, of which he was a member. He destroyed a lot of work from this early period shortly afterwards.
Life and work
Schoonhoven worked from 1946 until his retirement in 1979 at the Central Buildings Department of (the then state-owned company) PTT. His artistry therefore took place in the evenings and on free weekends. In 1953 he started crafting with paper and corrugated cardboard for his son: knight's castles, factories and a mountain range. He also started making churches and other buildings from these materials. The "Apostle House", which is probably the only art object from this period to have survived, was restored in 2019–2021 at the Museum Prinsenhof in Delft.
Around 1956-57 he started making his very first monochrome white reliefs, no longer in paint but in papier-mâché, in order to obtain a tangible appearance in his work. The emphasis on the material was already palpable in the artistic air, which he recognized at that time in the impasto abstract paintings of Bram Bogart, which inspired him.[1] From now on Schoonhoven used pieces of corrugated cardboard, papier-mâché and many toilet rolls as materials for his works of art. They were attached to a plywood base. The representations in these first reliefs were created according to geometric principles.
Moreover, his works of art were no longer given a title, but only letters (referring to the type of artwork, such as T for a drawing and R for a relief)), followed by a number (for the year of manufacture) and a serial number.

Much later, from 1978 onwards, many drawings were created: with lines, dots and hatchings, Schoonhoven then drew partly expressive, almost calligraphic, pen and brush drawings.