Emo Verkerk - Large lithograph "Dante - Fin" - limited edition (84/100) signed

• Emo Verkerk (1955-)
• Silkscreen from the folder "10 years later"
• Printer: Zeger reijers
• no. 84/ 100
• signed, dated and numbered in pencil

large lithograph depicting a male figure, Dante. The man is depicted straight ahead, his head turned slightly to the right, depicted below the waist. In his left hand he holds a square piece of paper with "FIN" on it. This piece of paper is glued to the lithograph.

Emo Verkerk (Amsterdam, 1955) is studying philosophy when he comes into contact with the interviews that the English critic David Sylvester holds with the painter Francis Bacon. His descriptions of what painting is to him and how he works are philosophy in practice for Verkerk. Following this introduction to Bacon, Verkerk portrays the painter in three drawings. It is 1977. The following year, Verkerk will apply for admission to the Ateliers '63 – today De Ateliers – and be accepted.
Verkerk's oeuvre consists of landscapes and spatial images, mainly portraits. Sometimes drawn, sometimes sculpted, but mostly painted. He uses various materials as a base, including paper, linen, cardboard, tin, marble and wood. Objects also serve as a carrier. A plastic bucket and chain guard, for example.
Samuel Beckett, Julius Caesar, Dmitri Shostakovich, Edgar Allen Poe, Pablo Picasso, Lewis Caroll. These are just a few of the figures from history portrayed by Verkerk. Verkerk's choice of whom he portrays is personal. "They are all a bit autobiographical, you know." Often they are people who interest him in one way or another. In addition to famous names, these can also be people from his immediate environment.
Verkerk's portraits have many manifestations. The face of poet and writer J. Slauerhoff is cream-coloured for the viewer on the left, pink on the right. Franz Kafka's face appears through a counter-form in plywood against a marble background. George Simenon is reduced to a wooden pipe protruding from the wall and a copper nose flanked by two holes made in the wall with a nail, being the eyes.
Verkerk studied philosophy at the University of Amsterdam and the Free University in Amsterdam (1974-1976) and at De Ateliers (1978-1980). Verkerk's work has been exhibited in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, the Fries Museum (Leeuwarden), Marian Goodman Gallery (New York) and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, among others.