Jan van Heel was a Dutch painter.
He worked in Rotterdam, in Paris from 1946 to 1947, and in The Hague. Van Heel visited the evening course of the Academy of Fine Arts Rotterdam until 1925 and a year later moved to The Hague were he became a teacher.
In 1951 he was the co-founder of Verve in The Hague, established by Pulchri Studio members, and later Fugare. The emphasis of this group was on abstract and experimental art, although still figurative.
Van Heel’s work is considered to be New Hague School, a movement of the 1950s- and 60s that opposed the Cobra avant-garde movement and was inspired by the Hague School.
Van Heel was a member of the selection committees for the Dutch contribution to the Venice Biennale and Paris Biennale. In 1968 he was appointed Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau.
Van Heel's work is part of the collections of Museum Maassluis, the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede.
