Biografie von Jan MULLER (1922-1958)

Birth place: Hamburg, Germany

Death place: Provincetown, MA

Addresses: Provincetown, MA (1955-on)

Profession: Painter

Studied: ASL, early 1940s; Hans Hofmann Sch. Art, NYC, 1945-50

Exhibited: Hansa Gal., 1954-59 (solos); Sun Gal., Provincetown, 1950s; AIC 1953; MoMA; WMAA, 1957; Univ. Minnesota, 1960; Guggenheim Mus., 1962

Work: MoMA; Guggenheim Mus.; Newark Mus.

Comments: In 1933, he left Germany, going first to Czechslovakia, then to southern France (in a refugee camp), and finally came to NYC in 1941 where he took his first art classes. Under Hofmann he became an abstract painter but around 1954 he switched to symbolic figurative expressionismóusually featuring brightly-colored nudes. When he died at only 36 (from heart failure due to rheumatic fever), he was widely admired and imitated in Provincetown for having developed a figurative style very different from that of DeKooning.

Sources: Benezit, 594; Provincetown Painters, 81-82