Jan Mulder

JAN MULDER (Belgium, 1895-1988).
"Duality".
Oil on canvas.
With label on the back of the Stedelijk Museum in Lakenhalm, Leiden.
It was part of the Jan Mulder retrospective at the Van Langenhove Gallery in 1993.
Measurements: 53 x 65 cm; 58 x 70 cm (frame).

Jan Mulder presents us with a composition of metaphysical inspiration and surrealist traces in which two female figures without head, hands, or feet merge into a single body, facing each other's backs but with great connection. The simplicity of the forms gives a poetic and evocative character to the composition, which with few resources tells us about the duality of the human being.

Raised in Maastricht, Jan Mulder moved to Amsterdam in 1906, where he attended professional and art schools. After World War I he worked as a theater decorator, interior designer and advertising artist and later developed as a painter. He had contacts with the avant-garde art scene in Amsterdam, where he met Erich Wichmann, Laurens van Kuijck, Piet Mondriaan and Theo van Doesburg, among others. In 1921 he undertook a trip to Cuba, Mexico and the United States. A year later he debuted his paintings in De Branding in Rotterdam. Between 1925 and 1931 he lived and worked in France, first in Paris, where he worked with Erich Wichmann in the Dutch pavilion of the "Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs" and later in the fishing village of Etaples-sur-Mer. He was a member and exhibited in "Les vrais Indépendents". Upon returning to Amsterdam, he became a member of the board of directors of De Independents and president of the painters' association De Brug. With the latter group he exhibited annually at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1946/47 he received two consecutive grants from the Dutch-Swedish Van Gogh Committee for a stay in Sweden. This was the reason why in 1947 he settled permanently in Sweden.