° 1940

Works in Amsterdam (Netherlands), born in Enschede (Netherlands), lives in Amtserdam (Netherlands).

Jan Cremer was born on 20 April 1940 in Enschede, just before the Second World War swept over the Netherlands. At this first solo exhibition in De Posthoorn gallery in The Hague in 1958, the critics -still not fully recovered from the CoBrA riots- spoke of a 'wild animal'. A year later he exhibited in the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, followed by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. He subsequently stayed for three years on Ibiza, connected with the Grupo Ibiza. In the meantime Cremer worked on his first book I, Jan Cremer. Published in The Netherlands in 1964 it caused a real cultural revolution and has since sold millions all over the world. There also followed more than a hundred exhibitions of his artworks in museums and galleries not only in The Netherlands but in many other countries. Cremer wrote more books, but also kept on painting, abandoning the abstract style of peinture barbarisme in favor of paintings of tulip fields and other aspects of the Dutch landscape. There followed many years of travelling and painting, during which he wrote travel stories for leading newspapers and magazines as well. Jan Cremer still manages to combine his work with his wanderlust.