Jan Hendrix

Silkscreen Print, Jan Hendrix

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Jan Hendrix was born in the town of Maasbree, Holland, in the midst of a family deeply rooted in the farming lifestyle of the region and drastically opposed to Hendrix’s early choice of a career in the arts at the age of sixteen, after persistently failing all subjects at school with the exception of drawing. Prominent among his childhood memories is an outing in his father’s first car and a visit to a local museum reminisced in the Kunst-und-Wunderkammer that would later become a clear reference in his work. Having left the family house, at seventeen he enrolled in the Royal Academy of the Arts in Den Bosch, only to be expelled due to his rebellious behavior. Later on, through an invitation from Japanese artist Shinkichi Tajiri, he became a student at Atelier 63 in Haarlem, the most radical educational institution at the time (1968-1969). There he would meet his mentors who, through filmmaking and dance, presented him with a multidisciplinary vision of art. While pursuing his studies, he entered the Smeets printer company in Weert to learn the craft of proof printing. From 1971-1975, thanks to artist JCJ van der Heyden’s advice, he continued his master-degree studies at the Jan van Eyck Academie where inspired by his contact with professor Han Seur, he focused on the graphic arts. During this period he established a strong link of exchange and communication with a group of artists in Düsseldorf, which worked as a think-tank, and involved, Beuys, Richter, Spoerri, the Becher couple, Kiefer, Lupertz, Filliou, Nam June Paik and Dieter Roth, among other artists. They would influence Hendrix’s postgraduate activities and projects, widening his codes of production, and ultimately leading him to choose paper and ink as his primary media. The less-than-orthodox education of these years will lead him to approach various projects related to the production of artists’ books, among them the Beau Geste Press in Devonshire, England, where he met Martha Hellion. This encounter led to marriage in Holland. Hendrix and Hellion traveled to the north of Norway where they set up a serigraphy workshop, built with the help of the local shipyard. Currently, they are separated. Back in Maastricht, in 1975 the Dutch the Ministry of Culture granted Hendrix a scholarship, which he used to travel to Mexico thinking of studying Mexican landscape. His first contact there was José Chávez Morado, who invited him to start a serigraphy workshop in the Alhóndiga de Granaditas (an old grain warehouse), in Guanajuato, with the idea of printing the cylindrical seals from Frederick Fields’ pre-Hispanic collection.