Kees Wattjes

My name is Kees Wattjes.I was born in 1951 in Rijswijk, a small town near the Hague, Holland.I come from a long line of artists.Writers, poets, architects, painters, and photographers we had all of them in the family.That I suppose has had its effect on me.StartingI started studying art approximately in 1968,as we know it was a very good year.1975 and onwards I consider myself a professional.Due to the fact that my Grand Father, the architect, was a close friend with some artistsfrom the Dutch movement De Stijl we had some Modern paintings and furniture when I grew up.Abstract Art 1975-1995It got me interested in De Stijl and BAUHAUS and the American answer to that between the fifties and the seventies.You know Barnett Newman, Rothko, Stella,I developed my own reaction to this, I describe it as an intercontinental cultural conversation.In the early nineties I lost interest in abstract art , because in Holland it became very commercial.Destruction and construction 1995-1999In this period a large part of the city The Hague, were I live, was boarded upHole streets from different periods, 19th as well as 20th century buildings.That attracted my attention and I went to work with that strange phenomenon.I started to photograph and paint...

self taught,