Ger Lataster - untitled - Sold

Ger Lataster
untitled
1965
mixed media on paper
44 x 60 cm
framed 76.5 x 91.5 cm

Gerard (Ger) Lataster (Schaesberg, February 16, 1920 - Amsterdam, March 19, 2012) was a Dutch painter who is considered part of Abstract Expressionism.

Lataster, the son of a miner, attended the School of Applied Arts in Maastricht. He then went to Amsterdam, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Visual Arts from February 1941 to August 1946. In 1948 and 1949, he was awarded the Royal Grant for Painting. He is considered one of the so-called "Amsterdam Limburgers," a group that also includes Pieter Defesche, Jef Diederen, and Lei Molin.


Lataster in 1957 as winner of the NAR Prize at Museum Fodor, at the time an annex of the Stedelijk Museum.
In 1963, together with Mari Andriessen, Nic Jonk, Theo Mulder, and Wessel Couzijn, Lataster was instrumental in the founding of the alternative art education academy Academie '63 (later known as Ateliers '63) in Haarlem, now established as De Ateliers in Amsterdam. The motivation behind this initiative was the desire to meet the need of young artists to work for a period under the critical guidance of more experienced artists. In 1983, he became a lecturer in painting at the Rijksakademie.

His work is represented in a large number of museum collections at home and abroad, including the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht. His work was regularly shown at exhibitions at home and abroad, and he can be considered one of the most successful Dutch artists of his generation.

Well-known works by Lataster include the painting Playing Children (1954, commissioned by the Municipality of Heerlen), the four-panel work The Women's Hair; The Poets' Spectacles; The Workers' Shoes; The Ashes of Everyone (1976, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht), and the monumental ceiling painting Icarus Atlanticus (1987-88, Mauritshuis, The Hague).

He was married to photographer Hermine van Hall (1926-2009), a daughter of sculptor Frits van Hall.[4] The couple was portrayed by their son Peter Lataster and daughter-in-law Petra Lataster-Czisch in the documentary Niet zonder jou (2010).

Lataster was appointed Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion on June 11, 2010, during the opening of the exhibition Who's afraid of Ger Lataster in the Grote or Barbarakerk in Culemborg. In the same year, he received the Medal of Merit from the City of Amsterdam.

He passed away at the age of 92, a few days after being admitted to a hospital.

On the occasion of his 100th birthday in 2020, a dual exhibition took place at the Bonnefantenmuseum and the Gouvernement aan de Maas, both in Maastricht.