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Kees Spermon

Cornelius (Kees) Spermon (Rotterdam, March 27, 1941 - Saint-Sauveur-de-Montagut, October 23, 1992) was a Dutch visual artist, active as a graphic designer, painter, illustrator, draftsman, pen draftsman and etcher, and a graphic techniques teacher at the Academy of Visual Arts in Rotterdam. He made both figurative and abstract work.

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Although he preferred drawing and graphic work, Spermon was awarded the 'Koninklijke Prijs voor Vrije Schilderkunst' twice shortly after his academic training in Rotterdam in the early 1970s.

 

In the 1970s he made his first anecdotal etchings; figurative scenes, sometimes derived from family and travel photos. These recall the traditional, figurative of The Hague with artists such as Co Westerik. The human figure always reappears in Spermon's drawings, graphics and paintings. In his earlier prints, for which there is now an increasing demand, figures emerge from a dense fabric of nervous lines. At any moment they can disappear again into their identically drawn background like a strange concurrence of scratches. As Spermon developed further, he was no longer concerned with a real experience, but with existential seriousness arising from a not-knowing. In the years before his death, Spermon changed course. He looked more outside than inside, and he started painting in red, blue and yellow. Although the cloths seem cheerful, a drama often takes place in the performance. Spermon has left a modest oeuvre.

 

Spermon regularly exhibited at galleries in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. His graphics were also exhibited in foreign exhibitions. Work by Kees Spermon has since been included in the collections of, among others, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, the Haags Gemeentemuseum and the Arnhem Gemeentemuseum.