Delft, 1937
Jan Hendrikse initiated the first exhibition of ‘Informal painting’ in the canteen of Delft University in 1958 and is regarded as the founder of the Dutch Informal Group. He is also a prominent representative of the ZERO and Zero movement, which was the basis for a fundamental change in the art world in the 1960s. His work is also linked to Nouveau Réalisme and pop art.
Since the late 1950s, Henderikse has been making work with ‘rejects’, materials that we use with great love and throw away with much unlove. He chooses from just about everything that crosses his path: floating dirt from the Rhine, corks and ampoules, later also license plates and coins. These are all things that have been coming at us in an endless stream since the post-war world changed from a manufacturing society to a consumer society. Henderikse’s interest in the everyday is endless and constant. His statement “I am interested in everything that moves people.” makes him a kind of anthropologist or ethnographer who brings out the intangible in the tangible in an almost poetic way with his work.
