In 1981, Jan Commandeur (*1954) was awarded the Royal Grant for Free Painting, and shortly afterwards the first exhibitions followed in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (1982) and the Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven (1985). Shortly before, he completed his education at the Ateliers in Haarlem.
His paintings were shown in renowned galleries such as Art & Project and Collection d'Art and after the latter's closure at BorzoGallery.
In all those years, the landscape has remained the inexhaustible source of his painting and his oil paint and gouache the mediums with which he expresses his expressionist vision of that landscape. A few years ago, Jan Commandeur discovered photography as a means of shaping his artistic expression. It started with a vase of faded tulips, the fallen leaves of which formed a 'random' composition on the table. Photographing this still life, the painter saw the possibilities and opportunities of a further study with the help of photography. Not as an aid or preliminary study for a painting, but as an independent image maker in the hands of the artist. In this way, completely abstract compositions are created based on nature, just as Commandeur as a painter always strives for abstraction and achieves it by immersing himself in the landscape.
In this exhibition with recent work by Jan Commandeur, he shows his paintings and photos as independent mediums autonomously and independently of each other, but through composition, form and color they unmistakably appear to arise from the same creative mind.