Jan Deodatus - Bijzonder mooie droge naald Ets - Kastanjetak in bloei - 1948 - potloodgesigneer - Sold

• Jan Arien Deodatus was born on June 17, 1914 in De Zulthe near Roden on the family farm.

From 1935 to 1938 he attended Academy Minerva in Groningen, his teachers included AWKort and Willem Valk. At the training he was taught many techniques, such as drawing and painting, but also stained glass, lithography, batik, etching, woodcarving and modeling. In his working life he regularly returned to the various skills he had mastered at the Academy. He also continued to experiment with how to express what he saw and what he felt. As a result, he practiced different styles over time. From 1938 he attended the Institute for Applied Arts Education, located in the Rijksmuseum, where he obtained drawing certificates. He was taught by Jan van Tongeren, among others. During the war years he increasingly retreated to the farm in the Zulthe, because of the dire food supply in Amsterdam, but also to avoid employment in Germany. From 1946 he lived on Terschelling, where he moved into the house on the Kooiweg with his family in the spring of 1953. He continued to live there until his death on November 30, 1986. He, and initially also his wife Jannemarie, had lost their hearts to the island. In the first years there he tried to make a living from his art. He did travel regularly to the mainland to keep in touch with the capital's and rural art life, and not least to participate in many exhibitions at home and abroad where he hoped to sell the works made on the island. After a while on the island, he increasingly received commercial assignments to, for example, design brochures and provide illustrations. Just when this life was no longer financially viable, and he was forced to leave the island, he got a job for two and a half days at the Huishoudschool in Harlingen. In 1959 he was asked to teach Graphics at the Vredeman de Vries Art Academy in Leeuwarden. He was highly valued by his Academy students for his craftsmanship and attentive supervision. Until his retirement in 1979, his working week looked like this outside the school holidays: Monday and Tuesday he taught during the day at the Huishoudschool in Harlingen, later also the Coastguard School and Craft School there. In the evenings he gave lessons at the Vredeman de Vries Art Academy in Leeuwarden. On Wednesday morning, lessons followed again in Harlingen, after which he took the afternoon boat back to the island. On Thursday afternoon, lessons took place at the Huishoudschool in Midsland. On his days off and during school holidays, as soon as the weather permitted, he set out early with his bicycle and his painting equipment. He then looked for a nice spot on the island to put his field donkey and went to work. He was back home at three o'clock because from that hour visitors to the exhibition were welcome there. In addition, he contributed to the establishment of the BKR (Visual Artists Scheme) in Friesland and he was one of the founders and deserving directors of Stichting Ons Schellingerland. In all these pursuits he did not let his severe hearing impairment, which developed from his adolescence, prevent him. As mentioned, his work is very versatile. In addition to watercolors and paintings, mainly of landscapes and sometimes still lifes, he left behind many drawings and sketches, as well as graphic work in various techniques: woodcuts and linocuts, lithographs and etchings, as well as three-dimensional work in wood and bronze. He used various techniques for publicity design. In the 1950s he made many conté pencil drawings based on flower, plant and branch motifs. After that he increasingly made woodcuts. His interest in theater and dance was awakened, and he makes many sketches from the wings. His own decor experiments stem from that time. There will then be a period in which there will be more portraits of adults and children. From the 1960s in particular, he experimented more and more with design, and sometimes the performances also became more fantastic, as in the series he called Visioenen. The images show something about how he could internally experience the world as a place in which there seemed to be less and less room for individuality and beauty. He was reluctant to show this series, but it was exhibited a few more times a few months before his death. From 1941 his work was regularly exhibited at home and abroad. The work was included in various collections of museums, including in Amsterdam, Assen, Enkhuizen, Utrecht, Amstelveen. (Source: https://jandeodatus.simplesite.com).