Biography
The paintings grow by a kind of evolutionary accretion, with no predetermined form—no abstract teleology. The lines, patterns and shapes grow in this "pre-conceptual" manner, growing "from" but not "toward." That is why Jazz is an apt descriptor: there is a profoundly improvisational character to your work, the patterns emerge but are not forced or overdrawn, and in some sense never "finished," the way life itself is never finished, but rather constantly evolving. This is one reason your art is fascinating, it invites but does not dictate, it is suggestive rather than didactic or pedantic.
— Robert Proctor, Professor Science History at Stanford University
Jan Gerrit Schuurman (NL/DE) paints. The work is built, not planned. Lines, fragments, and fields accumulate. There is no fixed image. Some things hold, others do not. What remains stays. Nothing is corrected away. The surface shows how it came to be. He exhibited in the late 1980s and early 1990s, then worked for two decades in the health sciences. He returned to painting in 2013. His work has been shown at the Santa Fe Institute, LUISS University (Rome), the Independent University of Barcelona, and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. The Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven presented his painting Green Loop as part of an art manifestation. His practice is the subject of the documentary The Desert of the Real, about a psychotic episode. He currently co-directs a film on art and psychosis with Luuk Bouman. He lives and works in the Netherlands and Germany.
TV/Film
The Desert of the Real (director Luuk Bouwman, Netherlands, 2025, 105 min.) is a documentary about psychosis, perception, and the border between rational thinking and madness. Six people who have experienced psychosis — among them Jan Gerrit Schuurman — speak openly about what it means to inhabit a reality that no longer holds. The film premiered at IDFA 2025 (Amsterdam) and opens in Dutch cinemas on 14 August 2026.