Jan Roëde was a contemporary of Piet Ouborg, Jaap Nanninga and Wim Sinemus, whom he met regularly in The Hague. He was influenced by Miró’s form of abstract Surrealism. His paintings, populated by figures and shapes, are the result of a search for a world of forms that arose from him personally. Abstract or figurative was all the same to him. In fact the process of painting was more important than the forms that came out of it.