Jan Sierhuis - No Title - Vendu

Sierhuis grew up in the years of the Depression. His father died when he was two. In his early youth he already modeled and drew and on his ninth birthday he received a painting set. As a boy he often wandered through Amsterdam. He grew up with cityscapes such as those of Israëls and Breitner. Although Sierhuis has traveled all over the world, he has always seen himself as an Amsterdammer. He attended craft school to become a house painter, which gave him a great deal of material knowledge.

Together with Appel, Corneille and Lucebert, he was at the center of post-war developments in art. In 1945 he was admitted to the evening course at the Rijksakademie van visual arts, which he left after a conflict. He was involved with the Experimentalists in 1947 and with the CoBrA group in 1948. However, he was too young to join it. He later co-founded the Amsterdam artists' group Groep Scorpio in 1962 with Frans de Boo, Roger Chailloux, John Grosman, Guillaume Lo A Njoe, Karl Pelgrom, Pierre van Soest, Aat Verhoog and Leo de Vries [1]. They were "Angry Young Men" who wanted to approach exhibiting differently. The group was supported by Prof. Hans Jaffé.

Jan Sierhuis taught at Ateliers '63 in Haarlem in 1968 and was a supervisor at Psychopolis, the Free Academy in The Hague, from 1970 to 1979. In 1983 Sierhuis became a teacher at the Rietveld Academy and in 1984 at the Rijksakademie, institute for practical studies, both in Amsterdam.

Sierhuis received the Royal Grant for Painting for his work in 1956, and in 1957 he received a medal from the Thérèse van Duyl-Schwartze portrait prize. In 1987 he was awarded the Jeanne Oosting Prize. He also received an honorable mention at the Prix de Rome. In 2002 he became an Officer in the Order of Oranje-Nassau.