Artist. He had a childhood of conflicting emotion, during which he co-founded the Jeune Peinture Belge group and worked on the fringes of the Cobra movement. In 1956 he came to America, where he lived for the next 18 years. Becoming head of the Painting Department at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. He was recognized as an inspired painter and teacher. In 1974 he returned to Belgium, to live in Antwerp, and devote himself exclusively to painting, but he returned disillusioned following a failed marriage, financial problems and an early onset of alcoholism. Jan was hyper-sensitive and suffered from recurrent depression throughout his life. Several of his paintings are abstract, though some of his major successes were figurative work, for an example, the cycle based on the myth of Orpheus which he produced in Boston, the cycle based on Homer’s Iliad he produced after his return to Antwerp. A documentary on his life was released in 1988 called Jan Cox, a Painter's Odyssey, detailing his passion for painting and his tragic mind set of being so divided between dream and reality that tore at his personality and would eventually lead to self-destruction. He committed suicide at the age of 61.
Artist. He had a childhood of conflicting emotion, during which he co-founded the Jeune Peinture Belge group and worked on the fringes of the Cobra movement. In 1956 he came to America, where he lived for the next 18 years. Becoming head of the Painting Department at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. He was recognized as an inspired painter and teacher. In 1974 he returned to Belgium, to live in Antwerp, and devote himself exclusively to painting, but he returned disillusioned following a failed marriage, financial problems and an early onset of alcoholism. Jan was hyper-sensitive and suffered from recurrent depression throughout his life. Several of his paintings are abstract, though some of his major successes were figurative work, for an example, the cycle based on the myth of Orpheus which he produced in Boston, the cycle based on Homer’s Iliad he produced after his return to Antwerp. A documentary on his life was released in 1988 called Jan Cox, a Painter's Odyssey, detailing his passion for painting and his tragic mind set of being so divided between dream and reality that tore at his personality and would eventually lead to self-destruction. He committed suicide at the age of 61.
Bio by: Shock
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