Jaap Wagemaker

Jaap Wagemaker (1906–1972) was a prominent Dutch painter born in Haarlem. He attended the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts at the age of 14. After completing his studies, Wagemaker moved to Paris to pursue his passion for painting. He returned to the Netherlands in the early 1940s, but eventually resettled in Paris in 1952. Wagemaker began exhibiting regularly in the 1960s, representing the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale in 1962 and having a solo exhibition at the Hague Municipal Museum in 1965.

Wagemaker is renowned as the Netherlands' foremost representative of the Informal Art movement, particularly known for 'matter painting.' This movement emerged in Paris after 1945, characterized by a lyrical abstraction that diverged from pre-war realism. In the 1950s, this evolved into Informal Art, where the material itself became a crucial means of expression, with artists abandoning recognizably figurative forms. Wagemaker, along with European contemporaries like Alberto Burri, Antonio Tapiès, and Jean Dubuffet, significantly contributed to this movement, emphasizing the expressive potential of the materials used in their art.