About the artist
Jacob Kuijper was educated (ca. 1937-1940) at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and at the Amsterdam State Academy. Kuijper has won several prizes, including the Willink van Collen Prize (1947) and the Thérèrese van Duijl-Schwartze Prize (1953). From 1973-1984 Kuijper was professor of Free Painting at the State Academy.
In general, Kuijper worked from drawings he made while walking along the Waal: he painted inside. Although you might say that Kuijper was a landscape painter, his main motive was man. ‘I try to represent the atmosphere in which we all live, its color, the light, the air, the space and I try to do it in such a way that it always has to do with people. So, no matter how succinct, sometimes a person appears here and there, sometimes there is no person at all, only small boats, or an excavator, such things, which therefore indicate the stay of man in our beautiful atmosphere.'
Source: VPRO, the evenings June 4, 2004: Jacob Kuijper, painter in Varik.
Some details at a glance:
Education
(c. 1937-1940)
Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
State Academy of Art, Amsterdam
Exhibitions
(selection; one-man exhibitions, unless stated otherwise)
