Jan de Vries

Jan Luitzen de Vries completed a university degree in Dutch and worked in the business world for several years before devoting himself entirely to his art as a self-taught artist. Visibly fascinated by comic art and the work of Matisse, Wesselmann, and Lichtenstein, Vries describes his work as a pure passion for color and form.

Vries’s paintings are characterized by bright, almost fluorescent colors and sharp, magnified images that seem to burn themselves into the viewer’s retina. The uncomplicated narrative makes his work accessible to everyone. Rising and setting suns, cloud formations, crashing waves, and deserts make up the landscape aspect of his work, but there are also nocturnal cityscapes, geometric vistas, and stained-glass-like mosaic scenes.

De Vries’s pop art translates images from comic strips into colossal canvases. His paintings are not literal enlargements. The “originals” used have been adapted to their new purpose in a subtle way. These adaptations primarily involve changes necessary to keep the extremely large image self-explanatory. Kunstuitleen.nl has many original canvases and silkscreen prints by Jan Luitzen de Vries in its collection.