Jan Cremerartist • painterEnschede 1940

After a restless period of working, attending academy, sailing and painting in a studio on the rue Santeuil in Paris, the painter-writer-sculptor Jan Cremer graduated from the Paris Academy. In 1958 he held his first one-man exhibition at Galerie de Posthoorn in The Hague, in 1960 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam with broadly painted abstractions that he referred to as 'peinture barbarisme', a form of painting that focused on the ruins of old aesthetics. 'It's all rubbish, estetika,' said the eighteen-year-old barbarian. 'I screw up paint on a canvas, I drip, splash, hit, kick, I fight with paint and sometimes I win'. Between 1960 and 1963 he lives in Ibiza for three years where he continues his working method. He then leaves for a longer period of time to New York where he paints, writes and produces films. He is also a freelance reporter and art critic for De Haagse Post and Vrij Nederland and works as a set designer. In 1964 his book 'Ik Jan Cremer' was published, through which he would become well known throughout the Netherlands.