Josef Santen (1926 – 1988), was a Dutch painter.

Biography

He was born in Amsterdam. According to the RKD he was a pupil of

Henri Boot Henri is an Estonian, Finnish, French, German and Luxembourgish form of the masculine given name Henry. People with this given name ; French noblemen :'' See the 'List of rulers named Henry' for Kings of France named Henri.'' * Henri I de Montm ...

and 3rd prize winner of the Willink van Collen prize.Josef Santen
in the

RKD The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

He lived a short period with

Anton Heyboer Anton Heyboer (; 9 February 1924 – 9 April 2005) was a Dutch painter and printmaker. Biography According to the informational booklet "Anton Heyboer: Timeless Work", he was born on the small island of Pulau Weh in the north of Sumatra as the ...

and his first wife Erna in the Zonnesteeg in Haarlem before he owned his own workshop. He became a member of

Kunst zij ons doel Kunst zij ons doel, or KZOD, (English: ''Art be our aim'') is the name of an artists club in the Waag, Haarlem. History The Society was founded in 1821 as the continuation of the ' Haarlemse Teekenacademie', established in 1772 by Cornelis van N ...

, and was second chairman in 1971. He died in Haarlem.

Heyboer forgery scandal

In a 2016 documentary about an art forgery scandal involving work by Heyboer that was first reported in 2012, the former Amsterdam "Anton Heyboer Gallery" owners George Knubben and Couzijn Simon were portrayed as having purchased "Haarlem-period" Heyboer works starting in April 2004 possibly coming from a collection formed by Santen.Echt en Vals In de geest van Anton Heyboer
Wednesday 26 October 2016 22:55, Dutch TV program 2Doc by Ko van Reenen The seller, the graphic artist Robbert de Bakker, called himself "Bijvoet" when he sold the works and refused to say where the works came from exactly. The widows of Heyboer living in

Den Ilp Den Ilp () is a Dutch village. It is located in the municipality of Landsmeer, North Holland, just north of Amsterdam. The village's population was 809 as of January 2007. In the Netherlands, the village is known for its abundant lighting displays ...

claim the works are false, though Heyboer's former wife during his "Haarlem-period", Erna Heyboer, claimed the works looked genuine to her. Experts claimed that if genuine, the works may have come from an "old Haarlem collection of etchings". One of the etchings shown in the documentary is signed on the back along with names "Josef Santen" and "Frans Verpoorten" written in such a way that the name of town "Santpoort" can be read. Both men were colleagues of Heyboer before he spent some time in a psychiatric institution in

Santpoort {{Infobox settlement , name = Santpoort-Zuid , settlement_type = Village , other_name = , native_name = , native_name_lang = nl , image_skyline = 37110 Ruine van Brederode ...

. The collection is still untraced, but were returned to Knubben and Simon, who still firmly believe they are genuine.

References

1926 births 1988 deaths Painters from Amsterdam 20th-century Dutch painters Dutch male painters 20th-century Dutch male artists {{netherlands-painter-stub