Jeroen Blankert: Paintings
May 19 – July 14, 2018 at Café Bern
From May 19 until July 14, 2018 Jeroen Blankert exhibits at Café Bern. A natural talent, a great respect for technique and twenty years of practice have resulted in an imposing body of work.
Please feel free to drop by. From 4:00-6:00 p.m. you can come and see the exhibition at your ease. Or late at night, after 11:00 p.m., when the rather busy dinner time has finished and a lovely relaxed “after hours” atmosphere has descended on Café Bern.
Below you can already have a preview of some of the works exhibited at Café Bern.
Jeroen Blankert
Jeroen Blankert (1966) grew up among terpentine, easels and palettes: his father Barend Blankert and his mother Koos van Keulen are both renowned Dutch figurative painters. In fact, almost everyone in the Blankert family had dedicated his or her life to the arts, if not as a painter, then as a graphic artist of art historian. Even famous Dutch artist H.W. Mesdag (1831-1915) is in the family tree somewhere.
It seemed inevitable that Jeroen, as offspring of this illustrious family, would also do something in the visual arts. So of course he didn’t. He decided to become a drummer and enrolled at Amsterdam’s Sweelinck conservatory. But he couldn’t deny his roots – or his talent. Long before he graduated as a musician, he had taken up painting.
And so he entered adulthood with a drumstick in one hand, and a paintbrush in the other. A free spirit with a lust for life, albeit not a nine to five one, he became a man of many ventures. He painted scenery, played the drums for Ellen ten Damme, Joop van den Ende and Bettie Serveert , briefly ran his own gallery, and is the owner of one of Amsterdam’s most revered clubs-slash-cultural spaces ‘De nieuwe Anita’.
But the painting has always remained a constant. Natural talent, a great respect for technique and twenty years of practice have resulted in an imposing body of work. Landscapes in vivid colours, tronies , nudes, everyday objects, deeply realist but with a cartoonish edge; Blankert’s art is as diverse as his life has been.
It remains unclear what Jeroen Blankert grew up to be. Drummer? Artist? Bar owner? Gallerist? Culture vulture? One thing’s for sure though: Jeroen Blankert is interested in the visual arts – as a real Blankert should be. In the result of his handiwork, right there on the canvas. Not in the stories behind the image. He has enough of those already.
©2024 by Café Bern