Jan Schoonhoven was a Dutch artist best known for his relief sculptures made from corrugated cardboard, papier-mâché, toilet rolls, and plywood. His works were mostly monochromatic and purposefully non-expressive, emphasizing material qualities and formal experimentation like the works of Robert Ryman. Born on June 26, 1914 in Delft, Netherlands, Schoonhoven studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Early in his career, the artist worked on the evenings and weekends due to the government job he occupied during the day. He and his peers Henk Peeters and Jan Henderikse went on to make art that was a reaction to the brightly colored Neo-Expressionist works of the CoBrA group. Today, Schoonhoven’s oeuvre can be found in the collections of the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, the Dordechts Museum, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp, among others. Schoonhoven died on July 31, 1994 in Delft, Netherlands.
