Jan Vanriet

Collected Stories: The Bathers

Jan Vanriet (Antwerpen, 1948) is a painter and a writer as well. He showed at the Biennales of Venice and Sao Paulo. His recent exhibitions led him to Maastricht, Moscow, Brussels, Gdansk, Antwerp, Walsall, Toledo, Malaga, Reggia di Caserta, Bruges, Autun and London. Collected Stories is Vanriet’s thirteenth solo exhibition at the De Zwarte Panter Gallery — their cooperation already started in 1973 — and she gathers four themes of paintings inspired by classic images from the Glyptothek Museum in Munich, through intimate house scenes mixed with the hostility of the outside world, then comes the epic mourning after the crash of a football team, and finally the gouaches provided by Vanriet’s newest poetry collection Heldenleven (A Hero’s Life), appearing simultaneously at Polis Publishing House.

In 2018 Jan Vanriet published the autobiographical Radeloos geluk (Distraught Happiness), immediately nominated for the prominent Literature Book Spot Prize in The Netherlands. Last year an anthology of his poems, Kouwe kleren (Cold Clothes), was released. For the catalogue of Collected Stories the painter wrote some details concerning the content and background of his work. They are complemented by an essay by the distinguished Polish poet and novelist Adam Zagajewski.

The book ‘Collected Stories’ is available as a bibliophile edition of 25 signed and numbered copies, including two watercolored prints by Jan Vanriet. Price: € 500. A regular edition is available for € 30, excluding mailing costs. ‘Collected Stories’ is a publication by de Vrienden van De Zwarte Panter, and accompanies Vanriet’s eponymous solo exhibition, on view at De Zwarte Panter until January 17.

Artists: Jan Vanriet

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