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Ger Lataster

In the late 1930s, it was Jef Scheffers, the director of the Maastricht Secondary Applied Arts School, who pointed Lataster to modern masters such as Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne. Lataster later said the following about Paul Cézanne: “It was as if I was struck by lightning. […] I thought, if there is such a thing as real painting, it is this. ”

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Because of the second world war Lataster did not go to Antwerp, but ended up in Amsterdam. There he met the photographer Hermine van Hall. She was the youngest daughter of the artist Frits van Hall, who was murdered by the Nazis. This made him politically aware. After the war they got married and had two children: Daniël and Peter. These events became decisive for his artistry, which is one great monument to life itself and at the same time an indictment of human pride and the urge for destruction.

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He also received a lot of support from Willem Sandberg at that time. This influential director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam purchased several of his works for the museum and involved him in exhibitions of European and American avant-garde painting. In 1950 Ger Lataster took part in the group exhibition Young Painters, initiated by Sandberg, in the Town Hall in Heerlen, together with fellow Limburgers such as Jef Diederen, Pieter Defesche and Marianne van der Heijden. They had followed him to Amsterdam and settled there. In the press the company was referred to as "Amsterdamse Limburgers" (also known as "Limburgse Amsterdammers").

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In 1954 the Municipality of Heerlen Lataster commissioned a monumental painting for the Town Hall. He submitted two: an Icarus Atlanticus and Spelende Kinderen. The Municipality hung the second. The first was shown in a 1956 group exhibition in New York.