Jan Sierhuis - Alicante

Jan Sierhuis
Alicante
1964
oil on paper
100 x 73 cm
framed 134 x 103 cm damaged

Jan Sierhuis 1928 - 2023
Born: Amsterdam
Education: Trade school and partly National Academy
Jan Sierhuis was a painter, an expressionist pur sang. His greatest sources of inspiration were Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso and Van Gogh. An Amsterdammer through and through, a painter who only needs the reality of his surroundings to paint. As a boy wandering through Amsterdam, he saw city life as Breitner and Israëls had painted it so lifelike. A city full of simple people who had to work hard to survive, but also a city with cosiness and solidarity. As a little boy, he already sculpted and drew, and at the age of nine he received an easel and a painting box. His mother did not see an artistic career for him and sent him to the trade school to become a house painter. This training would be very useful for his technical knowledge of materials. In 1945, he was admitted to the evening classes at the Rijksacademie. After a conflict, he left the academy. He lived a bohemian life in Amsterdam and had deep friendships with famous Dutch poets, including Gerrit Kouwenaar. He is involved with De Experimentelen in 1947, and in 1948 with the Cobra group, but he does not join them. In the sixties he exhibits in Paris, Mexico, Brazil and Copenhagen. After 1984 he returns to romantic expressionism, on large formats he is inspired by flamenco, which fascinates him mainly because of the feeling that this dance conveys. These dances have everything of his painting: color, emotion, movement and rhythm.
Jan Sierhuis taught at Atelier '63 in Haarlem. In 1983 Jan Sierhuis became a teacher at the Rietveld Academy and in 1984 at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. Exhibitions of his work were shown in the Netherlands, Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Colombia, Japan, Switzerland etc.