The
absurd reality of Jean Thomassen
-
a
genius or just a luna-tic -
The
interest for paintings by Jean Thomassen is growing since quite some time,
especialy abroad. Also in the Netherlands there is quite a lot of interest
amongst art-collectors and musea for the very unusual (absurd) respresentations
of the hardly exhibiting artist. Nowadays Jean Thomassen is reckoned to be one
of the most important Dutch realistic painters.
His
paintings can be devided into three groups:
"Barbra Streisand for president"
The
power of the paintings by Jean Thomassen is especially found in the unusual,
mysterious and oppressing reality
the artist shows us in his almost insane and erroneus idea’s, in wich the
artist exceeds himself in everything you can think of, about apparent ordinary
things. Nowadays the paintings by Jean Thomassen can be found in various musea
and important collections in the Netherlands and abroad.
Actress Ine
Veen visited his studio and she was
immediately charmed by the paintings. She arranged his
first exhibition in the legendary gallery Artim in The Hague, in those days the
"home" of all well known realistic artists, like Carel
Willink, Johfra and Henk Helmantel.
"Actrice Ine Veen"
In
1975 there was a TV-documentary and the next day, all
his paintings were sold at the exhibition in the Reekummuseum at Apeldoorn.
In
1977 a large "sales"exhibition was held in Amsterdam, at the "Job
Art" gallery. The
"Job Art" gallery in those days had taken the place of the, by
management disagreements, vanished "Artim" gallery. Most works hanging
there were sold during the exhibition.
"Redlightdistrict in Amsterdam"
He won awards in, for
example, the US, Bulgaria and Canada. His astounding paintings were shown at
exhibitions in New York, Toronto, Houston, Los Angeles, Paris and Gabrovo.
Since
1998, Jean Thomassen is worldrecordholder of the smallest oilpainting "The
right eye of Ine Veen". The record of 1,2 x 1,2 millimeter is mentioned in
the Guiness Book of Records and this record has not been broken yet. It was painted
without a magnifying-glass.
In
larger format Jean Thomassen has also proved to be a skilled artist.
For instance he painted "Metamorfose", a triptych on canvas of
1,70 x 5,40 meter, for the Ennekingcollection, a painting he worked at for three
years. Even on those formats he cannot leave out the details. That’s why his
entire work is not very large and rarely shown at gallery’s.
"Metamorfose"
It's simply not possible to see a triptych of this size and detail on a webiste. That is why we placed the three parts seperately.
And still you haven't seen every detail, as the left part of "Metamorfose" shows.
In
the last few years a lot has been written about this remarkable painter. You can
find an almost complete list of articles, up to the year 2000, in the book
"Oude meesters van morgen". It consists several pages. An article from 1977 says: "What Jean Thomassen is
presenting in his minitiatures and portraits is genius, not to be matched and so
gruesomely perfect". Another critic concludes that: "The artist of
those paintings must be missing
from an assylum". "Jean
Thomassen is either a genius or as mad as a hatter" De Telegraaf headed in
an article in the Weekendannex.
"Museum Markiezenhof"
Drs. R.
Bastiaanse, director of the museum "Het Markiezenhof" in Bergen op
Zoom, voided five rooms of the beautiful renaissance palace (where once the
marquises kept residence), in 1995, for the first retrospective of the
"master of the absurd reality".
Prof.dr.
H.D. Schneider, former director of the National museum of Antiquity at Leiden
opened the exhibition and pointed out, the special bond of the painter with
ancient Egypt. Egyptologists will be pleased to read complete
texts, but also complete rubbish or funny remarks at its spectator. This
retrospective drew many visitors.
"One summernight with King Néphérites"
"Mudnedjmet"
back