Jos de Kleijn
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Jos de Kleijn, born as Jozef Alexander Maria de Kleijn on June 23, 1947 in Grave (Netherlands), is a visual artist living in Göhl, Ostholstein, Germany.
Career[edit]
After completing an apprenticeship as a carpenter and obtaining his specialized high school diploma, Jos de Kleijn studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam from 1969 to 1971 and at the Muthesius Kunsthochschule in Kiel from 1977 to 1983, where he studied fine arts. Since 1983, he has been working as a freelance artist. Among other things, he exhibited together with Klaus Rilling and Jörg Plickat multiple times, with whom he also briefly operated the artist group "Der M" in the 1980s. He is a member of the Bundesverband Bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler, the Gemeinschaft Lübecker Künstler, and the Kunst Verein Neustadt in Holstein.
Work[edit]
In De Kleijn's extensive oeuvre, various drawing techniques are used, with drawings in pencil, colored pencil, charcoal, pastel chalk, and graphite dominating his creations, but oil painting also plays a significant role.
Among his early works are various illustrations, such as "Alois der Löwe" from Gustav Meyrinck's Des deutschen Spießers Wunderhorn and Edgar Allan Poe's König Pest. His works often include a narrative element.
Jos de Kleijn's work is consistently subjective and based on reflections of everyday life and the artist's autobiographical experiences.
His series Erbarme Dich – Bilder zu einer Arie which he first exhibited in 1991, for example, has a very personal reference to Johann Sebastian Bach's aria Erbarme Dich from the Matthäus-Passion. The works, including the triptych Erbarme Dich – Liebe, Alleinsein, Tod and ten expressive charcoal and chalk portraits Die Trauernden, contain motifs of love, loneliness, birth and life, death and mourning, passion, and violence. For the artist, who considers himself a non-theist in the sense of Erich Fromm, mercy here does not have a direct religious connotation where God is begged for mercy, but rather mercy for the people, life, and being. The artist's quote: "I am moved by the realization of our destiny, that we are part of the whole, that nothing is purely black or white, good or evil, and that opposites determine each other."[1]
The processing of personal experiences and emotions, as well as the theme of humans and their relationships, run like a common thread through Jos de Kleijn's artistic work. In doing so, he accepts that these themes can evoke uncomfortable emotions in the audience. He himself says that it is important to him to "move" his viewers - this emotion can be both negatively and positively connotated.
An important motif in De Kleijn's work is the representation of imaginary landscapes, which often serve as a stage for a painted or drawn human world theater. As the best example, various works with the title Gipfeltreffen can be mentioned, which have been created in various techniques (including colored pencil drawing on paper, oil on canvas) since the 1990s. However, the landscape as a stage for humans already appears in De Kleijn's early work.
In the 1980s, Jos de Kleijn began teaching as a lecturer at the Volkshochschule and now successfully operates his private art school in his studio in Göhl, where he offers various courses on different painting and drawing techniques.
Exhibitions (Selection)[edit]
- 1982: Pictures and sculptures. Stadtbilderei (Kiel, Germany)
- 1983: 6 × Young Art from Schleswig-Holstein. Kulturkreis Torhaus (Hamburg)[2]
- 1984: Jos de Kleijn. Paintings. Galerie "Kieken und klönen" (Itzehoe, Germany)
- 1986: Der M. Kunsthall Stavanger (Stavanger, Norway)
- 1988: Jos de Kleijn. Hildegard Grenzemann-Spiller. Jörg Plickat. Stadthauptmannshof (Mölln, Germany)
- 1988: Exhibition as part of the Grüne Woche. Hotel Kempinski (Berlin)
- 1991: Erbarme dich. Pictures for an Aria. Ostholstein-Museum (Eutin, Germany)
- 1992/1993: Animal Portraits III. (including Harald Naegeli) Brunswiker Pavillon (Kiel, Germany)
- 1996: Monika Arpad. Jos de Kleijn. Künstlerzentrum (Lübeck, Germany)
- 1999: Emotional and Subjective. Galerie im Lutterbeker (Lutterbek, Germany)
- 2002: Jos de Kleijn. Paintings. Gemeindehaus (Scharbeutz, Germany)
- 2008: Four Painters. Four Worlds. Galerie Konrad (Oldenburg in Holstein, Germany)
- Other exhibitions, among others, in Altena, Bonn, Münster, Neumünster, Rastede, Rendsburg.
Works in Public Possession[edit]
- Ostholstein-Museum (Eutin, Germany)
- Municipality of Ahrensbök (Germany)
- Itzehoer Versicherungen (Itzehoe, Germany)
- Schleswag AG (Oldenburg in Holstein, Germany)
External Links[edit]
References[edit]
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