‘La Condition Humaine’
17thcentury soldiers, pale mannequins and angels of heaven. In Jan Wisse’s paintings figures of past and present, reality and fantasy live next to each other. As do a caravan and a frog, a debris container and some deer, or, thirteen bumper cars on a lawn. Thus he shows us the world-as-it-is through his eyes and mind.
The recent paintings of Dutch-born artist, Jan Wisse (1955), show his affection for painters of the past, such as Vermeer and Rubens, as well as for contemporary art.
His paintings combine a strong evocative content of imaginative worlds, mastering composition and painterly exploration.
“I tend to give the rather dreary datum of ‘la condition humaine’, – a leading concept in my paintings – a somewhat relativizing humorous twist, or turn it into an apparent unreality.”
Jan Wisse lives and works in Delft, The Netherlands.
Biography
STUDIES AND PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS
1977-1982 ZWN-Delft. Study Teacher Visual Arts.
Graduated in Painting, Drawing, Sculpture and Art History.
1985-1986 Academie van Beeldende Kunst, Rotterdam. Academy of Visual Arts.
1986-1996 Member of ‘Haagse Kunstkring’ -Artist’s Society
1987-1988 ‘Haagse Kunstkring’, Artists’ Society.
Member of the Board and Chairman of the Exhibition-Committee.
1994-1996 Post Doctoral Study: Academy for the Arts, Fine Arts Department, Utrecht.
Art History, Art Philosophy, Cultural History.
1995–present Member of ‘Puchri Studio’, Artist’s Society.
1998 Curator, Organiser and participating artist of “Vormen van betekenis”; presenting 14 artists; amongst them:
Frank Stella, John Baldessari, Ellsworth Kelly, Peer Veneman, Han Schuil, Ton Mars.
1999 Project Co-ordinator of “Volume & Form -Singapore 1999” (jan-june)
120 Artists from the South-East Asian Region, Australia, New Zealand.
2002–2006 Member of Delft-Design, Designer’s Society.
2003-2006 Member of the Board of Delft-Design.
2007–present Lecturer at De VAK, centre of the Arts, Delft.
2011 Guest-Lecturer at Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam.
2017–2019 Board Member of ‘Coöperatie De VAK, centre for the Arts, Delft U.A.’.
2017 Lecture at Vermeer Centre, Delft.
