RENE JACOBS | PAINTINGS AND OBJECTS
Introduction
René Jacobs was born on April 20, 1969, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He is married and has two daughters who are 18 years old. He studied Economics at Erasmus University and discovered art and painting later in life. Between 1993 and 2000, he worked as a senior management accountant at P&ONL Containers. Starting in 2000, he began to phase out his business career to become a full-time artist. He opened his own gallery in the historic town of Delft, where he works in the shop window, allowing people to watch him at work. The gallery has been an overwhelming success: since 2006, René Jacobs has sold over 1,000 paintings in 40 countries. Last year, one of his artworks, a "Girl with a Pearl Earring" made of 6,000 plastic dolls, went viral and was featured on national television in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, and beyond. Even CNN Indonesia broadcasted an interview with him.
Art
René Jacobs has explored various styles over the years. For him, development and change are crucial elements of his artistry. He relates strongly to a quote by the famous Rotterdam artist Willem de Kooning: “I have to change to stay the same.” Over the years, he has created classical figurative oil paintings and mixed media works, which are partially painted and partly designed on the computer. He has also produced several series of landscapes and seascapes using driftwood. Currently, he is working on what he calls his "interventions": he paints contemporary scenes or science fiction fantasies into old, existing paintings, sometimes dating back to the 17th century. However, he is primarily focused on creating artworks with his plastic dolls. In his words: “Increasingly, society is encountering problems that impact us as a community and must be solved collectively. Additionally, the population density, especially in an overcrowded country like the Netherlands, is becoming a serious issue. The plastic dolls form a scale model of us as a society and the challenges we face.” He sometimes describes his work as Tragic Realism.
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René Jacobs is a 48 year old artist who was born in Rotterdam. Rene Jacobs always has been fascinated by the past and its relation with the present. Painters like Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Rogier van der Weyden and Vermeer have been his teachers and have remained an important source of inspiration. He has given some of their masterpieces a humorous twist to bring them back to our present time.
The Mona Lisa was given braces (made from iron wire and molted lead) to reveal the secret behind her mysterious smile.
The nun from Rogier van der Weyden is smoking a cigarette and seems to communicate with God via circles of smoke.
The Girl with the Pearl Earring was transformed into an image of pixels. The painting has been created with small blocks of old, painted wood. The viewer is invited to create his own girl with the pearl earring in his imagination.
But the work of Rene Jacobs goes beyond the recreation of well-known masterpieces. Rene Jacobs is also fascinated by the way modern times are changing the classical landscape. This theme is captured in the “battle of the windmills”. Rene Jacobs has painted some modern windmills on top of an existing, hand painted tile tableau from the fifties with classical windmills.
Finally the old meets the new in the painting “No Satisfaction 4 Keith” where Keith Richards is cleaning the streets to make a living. His fame has crumbled into obscurity but the rock star inside him will never die. In this painting Rene Jacobs is combining modern digital techniques with classical oil paint. Past meets present in the colourful and humorous artworks of Rene Jacobs.
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