Signed Roëde and dated '99

Oil on canvas

Image size 24 x 87 cm

Framed in A.J. Heijdenrijk 43 x 107 cm

Exhibition "Jan Roëde, verwondering in kleur in Kunst aan de Dijk Kortenhoef, The Netherlands

Biography Jan Roëde

Jan Roede (Groningen 1914- The Hague 2007) was born in Groningen as Jan Roede but grew up in The Hague, where he lived until his death, apart from a few periods abroad. After a short time as an advertising artist, he started painting at the beginning of the war in 1941 and immersed himself in painting, literature and Zen Buddhism. He painted intuitively and saw his best works as 'relics of an enlightened moment'. He had no special preference for the abstract or figurative.

After the war, he exhibited in The Hague, where his work was noticed by Willy Broers, later founder of the artists' groups Vrije Beelden (1947) and Creatie (1950). In 1946-1948 he lived alternately in Sweden and France. From then on he worked under the name Roede; easier to pronounce by the French. In Paris, Roëde came into contact with surrealism through the poet Paul Eluard. He also came into contact with the Jeunes Peintres de Tradition Française, painters who built on the work of Bonard and Matisse, among others. His paintings populated by figures and figurines are the result of the search for a world of forms that sprouted from itself.

Around 1948 he was inspired by Maurice Estève's 'inverted color perspective', with cool colors in the foreground and warm colors in the background. He would apply this principle frequently in his later work. In 1950 he also exhibited at Vrije Beelden in the Stedelijk Museum. Although his work from that time - influenced by Klee, Míro, and Picasso - showed some affinity with Cobra and the artists of Cobra asked him to join them, he declined the offer because he found them too rough.

Jan Roëde developed into a surprising colorist with his very own style. Playful and always with a smile, he painted simple human and animal figures in non-naturalistic color compositions. From the second half of the 1960s, his use of color became brighter and more even. Roede's work is colorful, light-footed, poetic, and averse to seriousness and heaviness. In addition to paintings, it also includes gouaches, drawings, collages, etchings, illustrations, book covers, costumes, furniture decorations, murals, plastics, glass walls and facade objects.

Jan Roëde was a member of the Pulchri Painter's Society in The Hague until the end of his life. Jan Roëde was a contemporary of Piet Ouborg, Jaap Nanninga and Wim Sinemus, whom he met regularly in The Hague. In 1968, the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague devoted its first retrospective to his work. Other important exhibitions were held in 1984 (The breakthrough of modern art in the Netherlands in the years 1945-1951), 1988 (The Hague Municipal Museum) and 1999 (Cobramuseum Amstelveen). Roëde was married to Maria Barbara Leewens and had two children.

For sale painting by Jan Roëde