Abstract composition in pink and glitter, 2015
€250
- Joop Verhagen (1942-2022)
- Oil on canvas
- Signed on the back
- 30 x 40 cm
- Not framed
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Joop Verhagen was a flamboyant painter, a box champion, a bouncer and mystical figure from Tilburg, The Netherlands.
At a very young age, Verhagen’s parents passed away during the war. Therefore he called himself ‘an orphan of war’. After living in a Tilburg orphanage, he initially trained as a house painter. He then attended the publicity department at the Academie Sint Joost in Breda and the Academie voor Kunst en Industrie in Enschede.
He was a photographer in the army. There he also took up boxing and made it to Dutch middleweight military champion. Next, Verhagen was a circus performer, a dock worker, a bouncer and briefly ran an advertising agency.
This striking Tilburger has profiled himself as a visual artist since the 1960s and gained attention from the 1990s onwards, as he always exhibited his abstract paintings at a different location in the city. He also had his Galerry Joop at various locations, where he also gave colleagues the opportunity to sell their artworks.
In his later years, Verhagen presented himself as a therapist for several years, using the Sufi Enneagram as a guide.
Joop Verhagen used abstract expressionism ‘to ultimately achieve harmony’ in
