Johan Jacob Voskuil (26 March 1897,

Breda Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...

– 22 June 1972,

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

) was a Dutch painter, comics artist, illustrator, bookbinder and a member of the Dutch resistance during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Biography

To dedicate himself to the arts, Voskuil left Breda and his job as a teacher in the early 20s for Bergen aan Zee. He was a

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

and made a lot of political

poster A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both typography, textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or w ...

s and book covers, like the cover of ''de Nieuwe Geïllustreerde Wereldgeschiedenis'' (1929–1932) edited by Jan Romein. In 1936, partnered with photographer

Cas Oorthuys Casparus Bernardus Oorthuys (1 November 1908 – 22 July 1975), known as Cas Oorthuys, was a Dutch photographer and designer active from the 1930s until the 1970s. Education Casparus Bernardus (Cas) Oorthuys, born 1908 in Leiden, was the fourth ...

, he organized an exposition to expose the realities of Nazi Germany during the Olympics of the same year, resulting are famous posters ''Arbeiders leest De Tribune'' and ''De Olympiade onder dictatuur''. Voskuil's work was included in the 1939 exhibition and sale ''

Onze Kunst van Heden Onze Kunst van Heden (Contemporary Artists/Our Art of Today) was an exhibition held in the winter of 1939 through 1940 at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Due to the threat of invasion in the years leading up to World War II, the Netherlands' go ...

'' (Our Art of Today) at the

Rijksmuseum The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the St ...

in Amsterdam. In 1941 he created a comic strip, ''Klit, de Schoonzoon''. Voskuil married German opera singer and actress on May 5, 1938. The didn't have any children. After her death in 1970, Voskuil remarried with opera singer Ruth Horna in 1972. Voskuil died shortly after getting married.

Sources

Voskuil, Johan Jacob
at the RKD databases

References

1897 births 1972 deaths Dutch illustrators Dutch comics artists Dutch communists Dutch resistance members People from Breda 20th-century Dutch painters Dutch male painters {{Netherlands-painter-stub