Jan Cremer

Painter / writer Jan Cremer (Enschede, 1940) has specialized in graphic techniques since the beginning of his training at the various art academies he attended. In addition, he taught himself painting and sculpture.

Jan Cremer first studied at the Academy of Visual Arts and Industry (AKI) in Enschede, where he makes his first linocuts in 1955. At the academy "Art Exercise" in Arnhem he learned the first principles of lithography from Hendrik Valk. Later, at the academies of The Hague and Paris as a student of Paul Citroen and Ossip Zadkine, he mainly specialized in lithography

Jan Cremer left for Paris in 1959 with a grant from the French government, where he ended up in Rue Santeuil, the famous hide-out store with the workshops of, among others, Bogart, Appel and Corneille. There he assisted Bram Bogart. Later he worked with Karel Appel, Jean Pons, Piet Clement and Peter Bramsen, among others.

His definitive departure to America in 1965 caused his visual art in the Netherlands to temporarily fade into the background. Jan Cremer started painting Dutch landscapes in New York. This very colorful and above all tightly composed "Dutch Realism", with cows, farmers and tulip fields, formed a break with the strongly abstract expressionist work from the years before. The theme of Dutch landscapes keeps recurring in Cremer's complete oeuvre, but the steppes, deserts and mountain ranges of Siberia and Mongolia, regions that he frequently travels, are a permanent source of inspiration. Just as the southern French and Italian landscape remain the "classic" themes in which he sometimes delves for months.