Jan Andriesse Dutch, 1950-2021
In August 2021, Jan Andriesse (1950), a painter "by the Amstel," passed away. In his houseboat, over more than 30 years, he created a body of work characterized primarily by light, space, and emptiness, but also by a meticulous observation of physical phenomena and the nearby waters of the Amstel. His paintings, gouaches, and drawings are the result of sensory experiences as he perceived them in nature-particularly in the geometry of the earth, the curved lines of the hyperbola and parabola, the rainbow, and the force of gravity guiding the catenary.
During a visit to his studio in 2015-a houseboat on the Amstel-the floor was scattered with large geographical maps. On a bulletin board, a map of the Indonesian Archipelago, where Andriesse was born in 1950, was pinned. Jan had draped a chain over it with push pins, perfectly following the contours of this 'Emerald Belt.' The wall opposite a large window overlooking the water functioned as a vast 'mood board,' filled with texts, clippings, drawn lines, and sketches. Jan Andriesse had a fascination with the line: the hyperbola, the parabola, the catenary, geographical lines on a map. "Did you know that the borders of the state of Wyoming in the USA are not natural but were entirely determined by latitude and longitude? ...And do you see that little chain in Fabritius' Goldfinch? ...And in that still life by the mysterious Torrentius at the Rijksmuseum?"
The discussion turned to Gaudí's architectural ideas, particularly his use of the catenary principle in designing the Sagrada Família. The golden ratio and the laws of Pythagoras and Kepler were deeply familiar to Andriesse. A painter, philosopher, and perhaps even a mathematician, but above all an artist with a unique sense of beauty. Hanging on the wall was a replica of a Mondrian he had painted himself. "I've made four so far; only the yellow varies slightly." Using a precisely drawn and cut stencil, Jan demonstrated what fascinated him so much about this Mondrian. When masked and cut in just the right way, his stencil revealed how Mondrian had measured and composed the four points of the diamond-shaped painting. A very large canvas, covered in countless layers of atmospheric white-a kind of cloud cover-contained an imaginary catenary. Mysterious red stickers-actually the sealing tapes from Van Nelle shag tobacco packs-marked the position of this catenary. After all, cartographic lines are never truly visible.
Study, research, and analysis occupied Andriesse to a great extent on a daily basis. As a result, very few paintings were completed-a natural consequence of his approach. His art was deeply conceptual and intellectual, yet at the same time profoundly respectful of the old masters and their views on light, composition, and color.