Jef Poldervaart is a Dutch artist. From a very young age Poldervaart is already heavily involved in creating music and designing posters. He writes stories and illustrates them with drawings. It is clearly someone who loves variety and an organic dynamism.
“Often people look, but they cannot see the essence. There is so much to discover in art: light, layers, dimensions, emotions. It can broaden your horizons enormously.” The artist himself is genuinely moved by what he sees. This emotion is to be found in his work that often consists of multimedia projects, where photography, painting and digital techniques unite. His photography – with the female beauty as loved theme –is like a series of frozen images from never-made films. It is up to the viewer to unfold the story behind the images. Many of his photographs radiate a nostalgic glow of that special and strong visual period from 1925 to 1950 in Paris and Berlin. However, the current images have been transformed into the current zeitgeist with modern techniques.
The photos are made up of many layers, with the first operations taking place on the computer. Jef Poldervaart then processes the photos on canvas and paper with paint, oil and chalk. Usually he gives his work a textual reminder or message.
The atmosphere is dreamy, mysterious and has a strong sensual undertone, but the women are never portrayed as lust object. On the contrary, they have a strong, self-conscious and independent appeal. The subtle use of color and the precise control of black and white or sepia photos emphasize this. It gives his work elegance and glamour that we know from the atmosphere of cities such as Chicago, Paris and Berlin in the ’20s and ’30s .
