Who was Jan Nieuwenhuys?
Jan Nieuwenhuys (8 January 1922 – 28 December 1986) was a Dutch artist and a key member of the Dutch Experimentalists group (Reflex), which eventually became part of CoBrA; the European avant-garde art movement. He was born in Amsterdam. Along with his elder brother, Constant, he decided to pursue a career as a painter, at the mere age of 14.
He studied at the Rijksnormaalschool in Amsterdam from 1938 to 1941, and during World War II, he also took classes at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam, where he met Karel Appel and Corneille.
Jan Nieuwenhuys Art Style
Throughout World War II, artist Jan Nieuwenhuys primarily painted clowns, nudes, and intimate couples. As soon as the war ended, he shifted his gaze to imaginative animals, such as fierce roosters, cats, and bulls. He had frequent disputes with his brother Constant regarding his choice of subjects, who felt that Nieuwenhuys treated his themes too frivolously.
In a 1964 interview, he talks about his artworks, saying, “I start with my material and my colour. With that I express myself. From the material, I come to my subject and that is maybe contrary to what painters did in earlier days. I paint the way I write, the way I laugh. That is why I paint differently all the time, because my moods change. That’s the way I feel.”
Jan Nieuwenhuys on Blending Activism with Art
Artist Jan Nieuwenhuys also stated, “As a painter, I don’t want to paint a particular situation. I am not abstract, not non-figurative. I try to be expressive and therefore I need certain images. Today I am in China, tomorrow in Paris, after tomorrow some other place. We are confronted every day with what happens in the world. You’re living in a specific spot, but also in the whole world. It’s maybe therefore that we become so ignorant and hard because we experience too much. Hunger, war. That particular situation doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
He adds, “I wish, if they see my work later on, that they can see the twentieth century. The artist must give his time a suit. And it doesn’t matter if he is an architect, poet or painter. In abstract painting, I miss the beat of this time, the rudeness. We, the people of today are living with the fear of an atomic bomb. The abstracts are building only a superficial world for you.”
Jan Nieuwenhuys and The Experimentals
In 1948, Nieuwenhuys, along with Appel, Elburg, Kouwenaar, Wolvekamp, Corneille, Constant, Brands, and Rooskens established the ‘Experimentele Groep in Holland.’ This group was soon subsumed into the European CoBrA group. During this time, his artwork was heavily influenced by dreams, children’s drawings, the artistic expressions of individuals with mental disabilities, and primitive art. His pieces prominently feature animals such as birds and cats, along with fantastical beings that merge human, animal, and mechanical forms. Many of these creatures appear to balance on tightropes or sport boats as hats.
Talking about the group, he exclaims, “The group was not founded as an exposition group but as a group of activists. We wanted to put an effort into that, to fight against the softness of art at the time and use our imagination to change that. Regrettably, I must ascertain that many of the Experimentalists of that day also became esthetics. Everything official stops to be combatant. I think that work of some of them look very dormant these days”.
Leaving CoBrA
Jan Nieuwenhuys quickly grew disillusioned with some CoBrA members, feeling they were more interested in gaining fame than in engaging with their artistic activism. Due to the growing conflicts, he left in mid-1949.
Subsequently, Jan Nieuwenhuys focused solely on his artistic endeavours. His works became increasingly liberated as he experimented with various materials, such as fluorescent paint and other items he could find. Anything could serve as a canvas for his paintings.
Image Courtesy – My Kawaii Quarter
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