Background
Jan Maarten Voskuil was born in Arnhem in 1964.
Jan Maarten Voskuil was born in Arnhem in 1964.
Jan graduated in Arts at the Rijks University of Groningen in 1989 and attended the Ateliers Arnhem, the former postgraduate program of the Art Academy of Arnhem during 1996 – 1997.
Jan Maarten Voskuil devoted his career fully to art. His well crafted and inventive spatial paintings are based on geometrical principles. His work is therefore regarded as non-objective or concrete art, despite his own growing aversion towards these qualifications. By creating a three-dimensional stretcher frame he evokes an ambiguous sphered surface as well as a comment on the boundaries of painting itself. His merely symmetric and often modular work recently moved into an outspoken asymmetric direction, suggesting an endless area of “free form”, leading towards an even more elaborate oeuvre.
Aside from being an artist, he is active as a curator, in which position he increasingly pleas for a new concrete, non-depicting art. Voskuil is represented amongst others by Gallery Rob de Vries in Haarlem and Sebastian Fath Contemporary in Mannheim. Voskuil is often described as a spatial ‘painter’ to explain the fact that he mostly uses paint, stretchers and linen for his work. In his minimalist paintings he crosses borders between sculpture, installation art and architecture. He usually refers to his works as concrete art – works that do not need to be further explained.
Voskuil’s work is exhibited in Musea and Art Spaces around the world, including the United States, Australia, Japan, Great Brittain, France, Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands. His work is collected in many Public and private collections, amongst which are The Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, the Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen and the Wannieck Gallery, Brno. Currently, the artist lives and works in Haarlem, the Netherlands.
Quotations: "In my work I look for opportunities to tell as little as possible and still remain interesting. Often the starting point is a white canvas that I want to come to life in some way."
