Cobbaert Jan

Jan Cobbaert was a Belgian artist born in 1909 in Heverlee and died in 1995 in Kessel-Lo. He was a painter, draftsman, graphic artist, sculptor, ceramist and designer of stained glass and jewelery. Education at the Academy in Leuven, at the Brussels Higher Institute for Art History, at the Academy in Brussels under the supervision of A. Carte and A. Bastien (1933-1936). Prix de Rome in 1937. C. Heyman compared his youthful works with the oeuvre of G. De Smet. The artist himself called his style "powerful but never aggressive, sensitive but never sentimental." He was inspired by the Brabant hills and by personal observations. Co-founder of the Apport Group. However, he couldn't find his way in the Jeune Peinture Belge movement and therefore went its own way. He opted for simplified figuration. Leaned to the Cobra movement from 1959, but applied his colors less brutally to the canvas than, for example, Appel, Corneille or Alechinsky. From the press: "His works are attuned to the heartbeat of man and nature and bear witness to the eternal dynamics of life and the world" and about his sculpture: "His barbaric sculpture takes the form of abstract signals in forged iron or polyester , angular in shape and worked through with open surfaces. In the feelings he suggests, baroque contradictions are expressed such as threat and reconciliation, passion and control." From 1961 he was a teacher of painting at the Academy in Leuven. Listed in BAS II and Two centuries of signatures by Belgian artists. (PIRON)