Jan lived and worked his whole life in Amsterdam from 1922 until his dead in 1986.

In the Second World War Jan painted almost only clowns, nudes and couples making love. Just after the war he started painting fantasy animals like aggressive cocks, cats and bulls.

He and his brother Constant had lots of arguments about his paintings. During the war Constant himself painted only, catholic scenes like piëtas and Maria portraits or still life’s and thought that Jan chose his subjects too lightly.

In 1948 Appel, Elburg, Kouwenaar, Wolvekamp, Corneille, Constant, Brands, Rooskens and Jan Nieuwenhuijs founded the ‘experimentele groep’ that a few months later became the European group CoBrA. Jan was in his paintings of this period influenced by dreams, children’s drawings, the artistic expressions of mentally handicapped people and primitive art. Animals such as birds and cats play a leading role in most of his works, along with fantastic creatures and beings that are made up of a combination of human, animal and mechanical elements. A lot of the creatures balance on a rope or wear boats as a hat.

Jan was soon disappointed in the members of the CoBrA group, some of them were more interested in fame than being an activist , he couldn’t stand the fighting that was going on between the members and so he left the group in the middle of 1949, some other members also left but they joined again, for the great exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum.

In 1964 he says in an interview; ‘ The group was not founded as an exposition group but as a group of activists. We wanted to put an effort into that, to fight against the softness in art at the time and using our imagination to change that. Regrettably I must ascertain that a lot of the Experimentalists of that day also became esthetics. Everything official stops to be combatant. I think that work of some of them look very dormant these days’

Jan went his own way, desillusioned, and concentrated only on his work. His paintings became more and more liberated and he experimented with different materials like fluorescent paint and everything he could get his hands on. Everything could become a painting.

In an interview from 1964 he says; ‘I start with my material and my color. With that I express myself. From the material I come to my subject and that is maybe contrary to what painters did in earlier days. I paint the way I write, the way I laugh. That’s why I paint differently all the time, because my moods change. That’s the way I feel.’

‘As a painter I don’t want to paint a particular situation. I am not abstract, not really non-figurative. I try to be expressive and therefore I need certain images. Today I am in China, tomorrow in Paris, after tomorrow some other place. We are confronted every day with what happens in the world. You’re living on a specific spot, but also in the whole world. It’s maybe therefore that we become so ignorant and hard, because we experience too much. Hunger, war. That particular situation doesn’t mean anything anymore.’

From the same interview; ‘ I wish, if they see my work later on, that they can see the twentieth century. The artist must give his time a suit. And it doesn’t matter if he is an architect, poet or painter. In abstract painting I miss the beat of this time, the rudeness. We, the people of today we are living with the fear of an atom bomb. The abstracts are building only a superficial world for you.’

Dutch newspaper article about the exhibition in ‘Galerie Nicolas Amsterdam’ 1 december 1972

Dutch newspaper article about the exhibition in ‘Galerie Nicolas Amsterdam’ december 1972

Danish newspaper article about the exhibition in ‘Galerie Moderne Silkeborg’ mai 1971

Danish newspaper article about the exhibition in ‘Galerie Moderne Silkeborg’ 12 march 1971

Danish newspaper article about the exhibition in ‘Galerie Moderne Silkeborg’ 12 mai 1971

Danish newspaper article about the exhibition in ‘Galerie Moderne Silkeborg’ 11 mai 1971

Dutch newspaper 10 september 1964

Dutch oktober 1964

Dutch oktober 1964

Dutch september 1964

Dutch Vrijevolk 18april 1964

Reflex 2
1949

Museum journaal
januari/februari 1962 serie 7 no 7/8

Cobra 1948/1951
Rotterdam, Boymans Van Beuningen, 1966

Catalog of Galerie Moderne,
Silkeborg 1971

Catalog of galerie Nicolas,
1972
(click on the image to download this special handcolored catalog as pdf.)

Kijk op schilders Portretten van 50 Nederlandse schilders.
Ed Wingen en Nico Koster.

Cobra, Geschiedenis, voorspel en betekenis van een beweging in de kunst van na de Tweede Wereldoorlog
Willemijn Stokvis. Amsterdam, 1974.

Cobra 1948-1951
Paris, Chalon-sur-Saône, Rennes, 1982/1983.

Informele Kunst 1945-1960. Lyrische Abstractie, Cobra en Materieschilderkunst.
Mariette Niermeyer en Willemijn Stokvis. Enschede, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, 1983.

Cobra in het Stedelijk Museum Schiedam
1984.

Cobra Il Contributo Olandese
Catalogo a cura die Mariette Josephus Jitta e L’istituto Universitario Olandese di Storia dell’Arte 1985

COBRA – Cobra 40 jaar later: collectie J. Karel P. van Stuyvenberg, Den Haag, SDU, 1988. Pap., 192p, illustraties vrijwel in kleur. Teksten vanWillemijn Stokvis, Ed Wingen, Graham Birtwistle e.a.

Vijftien stromingen in de Nederlandse schilderkunst na 1945 uit de collectie van het Acdemisch Medisch Centrum
Drs. Elmyra M.H. van Dooren en dr. W.H. Brummelkamp. Amsterdam, Veenman & Zonen, 1989.

De taal van Cobra
Cobra Museum voor Moderne Kunst Amstelveen, 1995.

COBRA : Copenhague, Bruxelles, Amsterdam
by Willemijn Stokvis Gallimard;
September 30, 2001

CoBrA the color of freedom The Schiedam Collection
In the 1950s the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam amassed an extensive collection of art by the Dutch members of CoBrA, including early work by Karel Appel, Eugène Brands, Constant Corneille, Jan Nieuwenhuijs, Anton Rooskens and Theo Wolvecamp, and more. This book offers an overview of the collection as well as essays on conservation, restoration and art policy. Edited by Ludo van Halem.~Essays by Piet van Dalen, Marcel Hummelink, Klawa Koppenol, Christel Kordes and Marjan de Visser. Paperback, 8.5 x 11 in./368 pgs / 400 color 100 BW