Jan Sierhuis - unknown

Year: 1973
Technique: Screen printing
Edition: 55/190
Dimensions sheet: 76.5 x 55.0 cm
Condition: Fairly good, has some minor damage to the edge of the work. See photos

Jan Sierhuis (1928 – 2023)
Jan Sierhuis is born in Amsterdam into a poor family. His father dies of tuberculosis when Jan is two years old and when his mother later suffers from the same disease, he is first placed in an orphanage and later with his grandmother.
In 1943 he goes to the trade school, where he follows the trade of house painter and learns materials and techniques. After his training he works briefly as a house painter but soon exchanges that profession for an artist. Early on Sierhuis chooses Breitner, Van Gogh, Munch, Cezanne, Picasso, the German expressionists and the fauves as his example.
From 1946 to 1948 Jan studied at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam, a relatively conservative institute at the time, which he left with a conflict. Later, from 1953 to 1956 he studied there again and in 1957/1958 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Sierhuis got to know the artists of the Experimental group, the 'predecessor' of the later CoBrA group, founded in 1948. Although he was about eight years younger than most of the artists of this group, he regularly hung out with 'the boys from CoBrA'. However, he did not join them, but remained an outsider. His work and working methods were influenced by them in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as by the American 'action painter' Jackson Pollock.
In 1955 Jan met his wife Tine. In 1956 he won the second Therese van Duyl-Schwartze portrait prize and in 1957 he won the shared Mr.Westendorp prize. In the same year he received an honourable mention for his participation in the Prix de Rome and he received a Royal subsidy for further education in Antwerp. During that time he travelled a lot, together with Tine, through France and Spain where he met Dali and Tine was portrayed by Dali. Sierhuis exhibited a lot throughout his life. For example, in 1961, at the invitation of two private collectors, he travelled to Mexico, where his work appealed and he was offered an exhibition. In 1965 he participated in the group exhibition 'The first American exhibition of contemporary Dutch art' in Philadelphia. In 1983 Jan Sierhuis became a teacher at the Rietveld Academy and in 1984 at the Rijksacademie. Jan Sierhuis has gone his own way his entire life, influenced by the spirit of the times, the various art movements and his fellow artists he has been able to create an important and completely unique, recognizable, mostly still figurative and mostly strongly expressionistic, oeuvre. His colors, his choice of materials and his paint treatment betray the hand of the master.