Jacobus Johannes "Koos" van Ellinckhuijzen (20 September 1942 – 6 September 2016) was a

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

n visual artist. He was most noted for his work on Namibian and South-West African

postage stamps A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail), who then affix the stamp to the f ...

Biography

Van Ellinckhuijzen was born to

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

parents on 20 September 1942 in

Pretoria Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to South Africa. Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends eastward into the foot ...

, the then administrative capital of the

Union of South Africa The Union of South Africa ( nl, Unie van Zuid-Afrika; af, Unie van Suid-Afrika; ) was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Tran ...

. He pursued a military career but, after 11 years of service, became a game warden with the Department of Nature Conservation and Tourism in South-West Africa. Without any formal instructions in the arts he completed four paintings during that time. In 1979 he became a full-time artist. Van Ellinckhuijzen was a

surrealist Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...

exhibiting in both Namibia and the United States. His personal preference were surreal and metaphysical topics as well as three-dimensional astrophysical panoramas that he called "Stereoptic" creations. Of his stamps ''The solar system'', ''Halley's comet'' and ''Satellites in orbit'' are well-known. The painting ''Nativity'' was awarded a first prize at a 3D arts exhibition in

Rochester, NY Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in Wes ...

in the United States. He is claimed to have been the first artist to manually produce stereo paintings. Adelheid Lilienthal, in ''Art in Namibia'', noted the scientific accuracy of his designs, their clean lines and his use of watercolor techniques. Of his sources of inspiration, van Ellinckhuijzen wrote that "

M. C. Escher Maurits Cornelis Escher (; 17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972) was a Dutch graphic artist who made mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. Despite wide popular interest, Escher was for most of his life neglected in t ...

René Magritte René François Ghislain Magritte (; 21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist known for his depictions of familiar objects in unfamiliar, unexpected contexts, which often provoked questions about the nature and bound ...

and

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

..all left their legacies in Koos' soul". Van Ellinckhuijzen died on 6 September 2016 in

Swakopmund Swakopmund (german: Mouth of the Swakop) is a city on the coast of western Namibia, west of the Namibian capital Windhoek via the B2 main road. It is the capital of the Erongo administrative district. The town has 44,725 inhabitants and covers ...

at the age of 73, a few days after suffering a stroke.

References

External links

"Tribute to Koos van Ellinckhuijzen (1942 to 2016)"
Gondwana Collection (Namibia), 16 September 2016. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ellinckhuijzen, Koos van 1942 births 2016 deaths Namibian painters Stamp designers