Gijs de Mol van Otterlooartist • painterAmsterdam 1964-2002

Gijs de Mol van Otterloo was a painter and draftsman and the center of a group of friends from the Amsterdam squatters and artists' circuit. Already in his youth he expressed his feelings with paint and colored pencil. After his brutal death during a robbery in an Amsterdam hotel where he was having a nightcap with a friend, the relatives found an overwhelming amount of his work – dozens of paintings and hundreds of drawings, often of large format. Many paintings in acrylic paint, with symbols, secret signs and images of visions with sketchy self-portraits in the background. His paintings are very colorful but lack a cheerful touch, which is often reinforced by the incised fragments of text that express despair, loneliness or despair. They show a tormented life with depression and haunting demons. De Mol van Otterloo has never made any effort for recognition or for exhibition of his work. The year after his death, the family posthumously organized an exhibition in De Luggage Hall, Amsterdam, in 2003.